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SAGO PUDDING (a German recipe)
Take four ounces of sago, and boil in a quart of milk. When the sago is quite boiled out, remove it from the fire, and stir in a quarter of a pound of creamed butter, four ounces of biscuit-powder, four ounces of sugar, the peel of a lemon, grated, and six or eight eggs beaten up. Butter a mould, pour this preparation in, and bake or boil. Send to table with a wine or raspberry sauce poured over the pudding.
A rich baked or steamed custard pudding thickened with sago and crushed biscuit. The original assumes you know how to handle a pudding mould and gives no times or temperatures, so those are the gaps worth filling.
- Cook the sago right outThe hinge of the recipe is the phrase "quite boiled out" — the pearls should lose their opaque centres and the milk should thicken, which will take something like 25-40 minutes over low heat with frequent stirring. Sago left underdone stays gritty and is unlikely to soften much once the pudding is in the mould.
- Quantities in modern termsFour ounces of sago is roughly ⅔ cup; a quart of milk in an English book of this period is the imperial quart, 40 fl oz, or roughly 4¾ US cups. Four ounces of sugar is about ½ cup, and a quarter pound of butter is one US stick.
- Biscuit-powderDried plain biscuits or rusks crushed to fine crumbs — the Victorian equivalent of using breadcrumbs to bind. Four ounces is about 1 cup of crumbs; unsweetened rusk, zwieback or plain tea biscuit works, but not sweetened digestive-style biscuits, which will push the pudding over into cloying.
- Creamed butterButter beaten alone until pale and soft, not melted. Beat it into the sago only after the pan has come off the heat and cooled somewhat, then add the eggs last, or they will scramble in streaks.
- BakingThe recipe gives no temperature; around 350F in a buttered mould, for about an hour to an hour and a quarter, until the centre is just set with a slight wobble, suits it. Nor does it mention a water bath, but standing the mould in one is advisable: this many eggs in a deep mould can curdle at the edges before the middle cooks.
- Boiling"Boil" can be managed as steaming: the covered, well-buttered mould standing in simmering water that comes halfway up the sides, about 1½ hours — though a boiled pudding of this date might equally have been immersed. Keep the water at a bare simmer and top it up with boiling water so it never runs dry.
- The lemon peelGrate only the yellow zest of one lemon; the white pith beneath turns bitter in a sweet milk pudding. Add it to the sago while still warm so the oils bloom.
- Yield and sauceServes about eight. A wine sauce of this period would be sweetened and usually thickened, with sherry or Madeira the likely choices, served hot; raspberry sauce is simply sieved raspberries with sugar, and is the easier and fresher of the two against so much butter and egg.
Sago — starch extracted from the pith of tropical palms, chiefly Metroxylon sagu from the Malay Archipelago — reached British kitchens through the East India trade and was sold in small hard pearls alongside tapioca and arrowroot. Sago recipes of the period are mostly thin puddings of sago, milk and sugar, often recommended for invalids, which is what makes this version stand out: the butter, the six to eight eggs and the biscuit crumbs turn a nursery food into something closer to a continental Auflauf, the baked or steamed egg-and-starch pudding found in nineteenth-century German cookbooks under names such as Sagoauflauf. A hot sweet wine sauce poured over a moulded pudding is consistent with the German attribution, though an English cook might equally have served custard.