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Sago Pudding, Boiled
Put a pint of milk into a saucepan with the thin rind of half a lemon, and let it simmer gently until it is pleasantly flavoured. Strain it, mix with it three table-spoonfuls of well-washed sago and two table-spoonfuls of sugar, and then boil the mixture, stirring gently till it is thick and smooth. Let it cool, then add two well-beaten eggs. Turn it into a well-buttered basin which it will quite fill, lay a buttered paper on the top, and tie a floured cloth securely over it. Plunge it into a saucepan with plenty of boiling water, and keep it boiling till done enough. Move it about occasionally for the first quarter of an hour. Let it stand in the basin a few minutes, then turn it out carefully, and garnish with jelly, or send wine sauce to table with it. Time to boil, one hour. Probable cost, 8d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian boiled milk pudding, set with egg rather than flour and steamed in a cloth-tied basin. The hinge is the egg: it goes in only after the sago has cooled, or it curdles into threads before the pudding ever reaches the water.
- SagoPearl sago, the starch of the sago palm, still sold in Asian and South Asian groceries. Small pearl tapioca behaves almost identically if sago is unavailable; the washing is worth doing, as it removes loose starch that would make the pudding gluey.
- QuantitiesA pint here is the imperial pint, 20 fl oz or about 570 ml. Three tablespoonfuls of sago in that much milk gives a soft set, not a stiff one — the eggs do most of the setting.
- Lemon rindPare the zest thinly with a peeler and take no white pith, which turns bitter over a long infusion. Ten to fifteen minutes at a bare simmer is enough to flavour the milk.
- Cooking the sagoOnce the sago goes in, stir over low heat until the pearls are translucent and the mixture coats the spoon, roughly 15-20 minutes. Sago that is still chalky in the middle may not soften much further once the pudding is in the basin, so cook it properly at this stage.
- Adding the eggsCool the mixture to lukewarm, well below 70°C, before beating in the eggs. If in doubt, whisk a little of the warm sago into the eggs first and return it to the pan off the heat.
- The basinA 1¼-pint (700 ml) pudding basin, buttered, filled to the brim as the recipe says — a full basin leaves no air pocket to make the pudding rise unevenly. Buttered greaseproof paper under a pleated foil lid, tied with string, does the same job as the floured cloth and is easier to handle.
- The water bathThe recipe says to plunge the basin into plenty of boiling water; keep it at a steady rolling simmer and top up with more boiling water as the level drops. One hour is right for this size. "Move it about occasionally" probably keeps the base from sitting against the hot metal; a trivet or folded cloth in the pan does the same job.
- Turning outRest five to ten minutes so the custard firms, then run a knife round and invert onto a warm dish. Serve with a wine sauce or a spoonful of red currant or quince jelly. Serves four to five.
Sago is the edible starch washed from the pith of tropical palms, chiefly Metroxylon sagu. It was known in Britain by the seventeenth century, at first largely as a medicinal food, and had become a common imported grocery by the nineteenth. By the time this dictionary was compiled it was a cheap pantry staple ranked alongside tapioca, arrowroot and semolina, and it appears often in Victorian cookery under two headings: nursery food and invalid cookery, where a bland, easily digested milk pudding was considered restorative. The eightpence given as the probable cost suggests cheapness was part of the appeal — a pudding for five people, made from milk, sugar, a lemon and two eggs, and set by boiling in a cloth-tied basin. The wine sauce, and the option of jelly, are what lift it from schoolroom fare to something that could be sent to table.