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Sago Sauce for Boiled Puddings
Wash a table-spoonful of large sago, and boil it in the third of a pint of water for ten minutes. Sweeten it, flavour with a little grated lemon-rind or pounded cinnamon, add the strained juice of a small lemon and a glassful of sherry or Madeira, let it boil up once, and serve. Time, twenty minutes. Probable cost, 10d. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A thin, clear, wine-sharpened sauce meant to be poured over a suet or batter pudding. Almost everything hinges on giving the sago long enough to lose its opacity before the acid and alcohol go in.
- Cook the sago before adding lemon or wineSago pearls only swell and clear in plain water; acid and alcohol slow the process and can leave the grains chalky in the centre. Boil until each pearl is translucent with no white speck, then sweeten, flavour and finish.
- "Large sago"Victorian grocers sold sago in several grades; large or pearl sago is roughly the size of pearl tapioca and needs closer to 15-20 minutes than the ten stated, especially if unsoaked. Small sago cooks in about half that. Fine sago flour behaves like cornflour and is not a substitute here.
- Sago itselfStarch from the pith of the sago palm, still sold in Asian and South Asian grocers as pearl sago or sabudana. Pearl tapioca of the same size is the nearest equivalent, though it goes a little more gluey.
- A third of a pintAn Imperial pint is 20 fl oz, so this is about 6 1/2 fl oz, a scant cup. Keep a little extra hot water beside the pan; sago drinks more liquid than you expect and the sauce sets thicker as it cools.
- A glassful of sherryA wineglassful was conventionally reckoned at roughly 2 fl oz, not a modern 6 oz pour. Use a dry to medium sherry or a Madeira such as Sercial or Verdelho; cream sherry with the added sugar makes the sauce cloying.
- SweetenNo quantity is given. Start with 1 to 1 1/2 tablespoons of caster sugar for this volume and adjust after the lemon juice goes in, since a whole small lemon's juice in a cup of sauce is assertive.
- "Let it boil up once"A brief return to the boil, no more, to marry the wine in. Prolonged boiling after the wine goes in drives off the aroma that is the point of the sauce, and it will still carry some alcohol either way.
- ServingYields about a cup and a half; the book reckons this sufficient for six or eight, so roughly 2 fl oz a head with a steamed pudding. Serve hot in a warmed jug; it thickens considerably if left standing and needs thinning with hot water and a whisk.
Boiled and steamed puddings were the backbone of the Victorian second course, and each wanted a sauce; cookery dictionaries of the 1870s to 1890s carry pages of them, ranging from plain sweetened melted butter to wine sauces like this one. Sago reached British kitchens in quantity through the Southeast Asian trade, much of it shipped via Singapore from Borneo and the Moluccas, and by mid-century it was cheap enough to be a workhouse and nursery food as well as a genteel thickener. Using it here, rather than arrowroot or cornflour, gives a sauce that is translucent and faintly beaded rather than opaque and pasty, and the pearls carry the lemon and sherry without muffling them. The costing of 10d is a reminder of what this book was for: Cassell's was written for households keeping accounts, and the wine, not the sago, is where the money went.