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Sago Pudding, Red
Boil in milk two ounces of sago. When it is quite thick, beat into it six eggs, leaving out three of the whites; add half a pint of cream and two table-spoonfuls of sherry, with nutmeg and sugar according to taste. Put pastry round the dish.
A Victorian baked custard thickened with sago rather than flour or breadcrumbs. The original assumes you know how much milk to use and how hot the oven should be, so both need filling in.
- The milk is unstatedTwo ounces of sago (about 1/3 cup of pearl sago) will swell in roughly a pint of milk; the original gives no figure, so work by eye and stop when the grains are translucent and the mass is thick enough to hold a spoon. Adding the half pint of cream afterwards loosens it again to a pourable custard.
- Sago and its substitutesPearl sago is still sold in South and Southeast Asian groceries. Small pearl tapioca behaves almost identically and is the usual stand-in; instant or quick-cooking tapioca does not, as it dissolves rather than staying in distinct grains.
- Cool before the eggs go inThe hinge of the dish. Sago boiled thick is well above the temperature at which egg sets, and six eggs beaten straight into it will scramble. Let it drop to hand-warm, then beat them in.
- Three yolks overSix whole eggs less three whites means six yolks and three whites: a deliberately rich, yellow set. Keep the spare whites for meringue or a soufflé.
- "Put pastry round the dish"This is a border pudding, not a covered pie. Line only the rim of a buttered pie dish with a band of shortcrust and crimp it; the pastry frames the custard and gives something to cut against.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A slow to moderate oven, 300-325F, is right for a baked egg custard; anything hotter curdles it and weeps. Reckon on 45 minutes to an hour, until just set with a slight tremble at the centre.
- Sherry and nutmegTwo tablespoons of sherry is a modest amount against the milk and the half pint of cream; a medium or oloroso carries better here than a dry fino. Grating the nutmeg over the surface at the end rather than stirring it through will speckle the top.
- YieldAbout enough for a 9-inch pie dish, serving six to eight. It firms considerably as it cools.
Sago is the starch washed from the pith of the sago palm, shipped to Britain in quantity from the Malay Archipelago through the nineteenth century and widely sold in pearl form. Sago was cheap, bland, easy to digest, and so a staple of invalid and nursery cooking as well as of the family pudding course. The "red" of the title is not explained in the text and does not come from any ingredient listed; the reason for the heading is unclear. What the version here shows is the Victorian habit of upgrading a plain starch pudding with cream, extra yolks, fortified wine and a pastry border until it could go to table at a dinner rather than a sickbed.