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Sago Soup
Wash six ounces of sago, and add it gradually to two quarts of nicely-flavoured stock. Let it simmer gently till the sago is quite clear, and put in further seasoning if necessary. Before serving the soup mix with it either the strained juice of a lemon and a glass of light wine, or the yolks of two eggs beaten up with a little cream. Serve very hot.
A clear, thickened consommé of the old school, finished either sharp (lemon and wine) or rich (egg and cream). Nothing here is difficult, but the finish is where it can go wrong.
- The hinge: never boil the liaisonOnce the egg yolks and cream go in, the soup must not return to a boil or the yolks will scramble into threads. Temper them with a ladleful of hot soup first, stir the mixture back off the heat, and warm it gently to no more than about 175F.
- Sago itselfSago is starch from the pith of the sago palm, sold as small hard pearls. It is not the same as tapioca (cassava), though pearl tapioca of the same size behaves almost identically and is far easier to buy. Both cook from opaque white to glassy and translucent.
- Washing mattersRinsing in cold water until it runs clear removes loose surface starch. Skip it and the stock turns cloudy and slightly gluey rather than staying limpid with suspended pearls.
- Add it graduallyRain the pearls into simmering stock while stirring. Dumped in at once they clump into a mass that cooks unevenly.
- Quantity and timingSix ounces to two quarts gives a noticeably thick soup by modern taste; 3 to 4 oz would be closer to what a contemporary table expects. Cooking time depends on pearl size: small pearls may clear in twenty minutes or so, large ones considerably longer.
- A glass of wineIn Victorian usage a wineglassful was usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz. 'Light wine' is not defined in the recipe; a dry, unsweetened wine is the likely intention.
- Stock qualityThere is nothing to hide behind. A well-made veal, chicken or beef stock, properly skimmed and seasoned, is the whole flavour of the dish.
- YieldTwo quarts serves six to eight as a first course. Sago keeps thickening as it stands, so hold back a little hot stock to loosen it before serving.
Sago reached British kitchens through the East Indies trade, where the palm pith was processed into pearls for export, and by the nineteenth century it had settled into two firm roles: the nursery and sickroom pudding, and the thickener for clear soups. Its appeal in soup was that it gave body without the flour-and-butter opacity of a velout he acacid-and-wine lift on one hand, an egg-and-cream liaison on the other — and the fact that the book offers them interchangeably says a good deal about how flexible these formulas were meant to be in a household kitchen working from whatever stock the week had produced.