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SAGO SOUP, WHITE (a Danish recipe)
Take half a pound of pearl sago, and wash it well in cold water; put it into four pints of boiling water along with the rind of a lemon. If liked, four ounces of raisins may afterwards be added. Beat up in the tureen the yolks of four eggs, add white or very pale brown sugar to taste, the juice of two or three lemons, and half a pint of white wine. Pour the soup slowly over this mixture, beating the eggs and wine vigorously all the while. The sago should boil for half an hour.
A sweet wine soup thickened with sago and finished with an egg liaison. The order of the final step is the whole recipe: get it wrong and you have curdled yolks floating in lemony water.
- The hinge: temper, do not dumpHave the yolks, sugar, lemon juice and wine already beaten together in a warmed tureen, then add the boiling sago in a thin stream while whisking hard and without pause. Adding the yolks to the pot, or pouring quickly, will scramble them.
- Pearl sago is not tapiocaPearl sago comes from the pith of sago palms and is sold in Asian groceries as small hard white pearls. Pearl tapioca of the same size is the usual substitute and behaves much the same, though it goes stickier; instant or minute tapioca will dissolve to glue and should not be used.
- Why it is washedRinsing in cold water until it runs clear removes loose surface starch, which is what makes the finished soup cloudy and gluey rather than clear with distinct pearls.
- Half an hour of boilingHalf a pound of sago to four pints of water gives a thick soup after 30 minutes, and it will thicken further off the heat. Stir often, as sago catches on the bottom, and hold back some of the water to thin it at the end.
- The lemon rindPare it in wide strips with no white pith and fish it out before the eggs go in. A full half-hour in the pot may draw out some bitterness, so 10 to 15 minutes is likely enough for the flavour.
- Sugar and wine"White or very pale brown sugar" distinguishes refined white sugar from the cheaper moist brown grades, the paler being the better regarded; use ordinary caster sugar, starting around 4 oz and tasting. Half a pint is a cup and a quarter of a dry-ish white wine, or a sweeter wine such as a Rhine wine or sherry if you want it richer.
- RaisinsFour ounces added to the pot for the last 10 minutes will plump without bursting. They are optional in the original and the soup is cleaner without them.
- EggsThe yolks are cooked only by the heat of the incoming liquid. If you are serving anyone who should avoid lightly cooked egg, use pasteurised yolks.
- Yield and servingFour pints of liquid makes six to eight servings. Serve it hot in cups as a first course in the Danish manner, or chilled, when it sets to a soft jelly and eats as a dessert.
Sweet soups of this kind — sødsuppe in Danish — were a fixture of northern European cookery, served hot as a first course or cold as a pudding, and thickened variously with sago, barley, rice or breadcrumbs, then sharpened with lemon and wine and enriched with egg. Sago itself is the starch from the pith of certain palms, imported into Europe in quantity through the Dutch East Indies trade, and by the middle of the nineteenth century it was cheap enough to be a staple of invalid cookery and nursery puddings across Britain. Cassell's gathered such dishes under national labels and printed them with little comment; the naming of a "Danish recipe" reflects the period's appetite for continental novelties as much as any direct line to a particular Danish kitchen. The egg-and-lemon finish is the same technique found in Greek avgolemono and in the German Weinsuppe.