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SAGO SOUP, RED (a Danish recipe)
Boil the sago as in the recipe SAGO SOUP, WHITE. Instead, however, of beating up eggs and wine in the tureen, put into it preserved raspberries, currants, or cherries. In summer, ripe fruit may be used, which must be boiled with the sago. Add sugar to taste.
A fruit-and-starch dessert soup that leans entirely on its companion entry for method. The sago does all the work, so its handling is the whole recipe.
- You need the white sago soup firstThe instruction "boil the sago as in the recipe SAGO SOUP, WHITE" means simmering pearl sago in liquid until the grains turn from opaque white to clear jelly. That companion recipe is not reproduced here, so its proportions are unknown; something in the region of 2 oz (a scant 1/3 cup) sago to 2 pints (5 cups) liquid gives a soup that coats a spoon rather than sets.
- Sago and its substitutePearl sago is starch from the sago palm, sold as small hard beads. Small pearl tapioca behaves almost identically and is far easier to find; use it measure for measure. Neither is instant, and both need 20 to 40 minutes of gentle simmering.
- Stir, and keep the heat lowThe hinge of the dish. Sago sinks and welds itself to the pan bottom, then scorches and turns the whole soup grey. Stir regularly at a bare simmer, and do not cover it tightly or it will boil over in a starchy foam.
- "Preserved" fruit means sweetened"Preserved" fruit -- Bottled or jarred raspberries, currants or cherries, commonly in syrup, stirred into the hot soup in the tureen off the heat so they keep their shape and colour. Modern jarred sour cherries or a good raspberry conserve stand in well; if the preserve is already sweetened, adjust the added sugar downward accordingly.
- Fresh fruit is treated differentlyRipe summer fruit is boiled with the sago, which extracts the juice and gives the soup its red colour. Redcurrants and sour cherries give the best result because their acidity cuts the blandness of the starch; sweet dessert cherries make it cloying.
- Sugar to taste, and a little acidNo quantity is given because it depends on the fruit. Start at 2 to 3 tablespoons per 2 pints and taste when hot, since starch dulls sweetness. A squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of redcurrant juice sharpens a soup made with tame fruit.
- ServingThe recipe gives no quantities, so yield depends on the batch; the proportions suggested above would serve about four to six. Sweet fruit soups of this kind are served warm or thoroughly chilled, sometimes with a spoonful of cream stirred in at the table; it thickens noticeably as it cools, so thin with a little water or juice if it stiffens to pudding.
Sweet fruit soups belong to a Northern European family that Danish cooks call sødsuppe, close kin to the thickened redcurrant-and-raspberry dessert rødgrød; in Denmark, Sweden and Germany such soups could serve as a course in their own right as well as a pudding, and were valued in winter because they could be built from bottled or preserved fruit. What makes the entry characteristic of Cassell's is the frame: the compilers treat the white sago soup, thickened with beaten egg and wine, as the parent recipe and the red as a variation of it, which is how a Victorian dictionary of cookery economised on space across thousands of entries. Sago itself reached British kitchens in quantity through the East Indies trade and was for much of the nineteenth century associated with invalid and nursery cookery, being cheap, bland and easily digested. A Danish version with real fruit and sugar is the same starch put to more cheerful use.