Sago Cream
Soften three tablespoons of Larkin Sago in water over night. Add to one quart of scalded milk and cook until sago is clear; stir in the yolks of three eggs beaten light with three-fourths of a cup of sugar. Cook two or three minutes, add salt, and flavor with one-half teaspoon of Larkin Orange Flavoring Extract. Pour into a deep dish, and cover with a meringue made from the whites of the eggs beaten stiff with one-half cup of powdered sugar. Brown in a slow oven and serve cold.
A stirred custard thickened with sago pearls and finished with a baked meringue lid. The hinge is heat control: once the yolks go in, the mixture must stay below a simmer or it will curdle into sweet scrambled egg.
- Sago, and what to use insteadSago is starch extracted from the pith of tropical palms, sold as small hard pearls. Small pearl tapioca is the closest common substitute and behaves the same way; both go from opaque white to translucent when fully cooked, which is the doneness cue the recipe gives.
- The overnight soakCover the three tablespoons with about a cup of cold water. Period sago pearls may have needed a longer soak than modern ones; if you use small pearl tapioca, two to three hours is generally enough, and quick-cooking tapioca needs no soak at all and will go to mush if given one.
- "Larkin" ingredientsLarkin Sago and Larkin Orange Flavoring Extract were house-brand goods sold by the Larkin Company. Any plain sago or pearl tapioca and any orange extract will do; a half teaspoon of extract is assertive, so taste before committing if yours is strong.
- Scalded milkHeat the quart of milk to about 180F, when it steams and a ring of small bubbles forms at the edge. It need not boil.
- Tempering the yolksBeat the yolks with the three-quarter cup of sugar, then whisk in a ladleful of the hot sago mixture before returning everything to the pan. The two or three minutes of cooking should be at a bare 175-180F, stirring constantly; boiling here will curdle it.
- "A slow oven"Roughly 250-325F; around 300F works. The meringue is being dried and coloured, not cooked through, so expect 15 to 20 minutes to take on pale gold. A hotter oven browns the peaks before the interior sets, and it weeps as it cools.
- SaltNo quantity is given. A quarter teaspoon in a quart of custard is right for the sweetness level here.
- Yield and servingA quart of milk plus sago fills a two-quart dish and serves six to eight. It is meant to be served cold, so chill it thoroughly; the sago continues to thicken as it sits and the pudding will be considerably firmer the next day.
Sago reached British and American kitchens through the East Indies trade, and by the nineteenth century it was a fixture of the invalid cookery chapter, valued as a bland, easily digested starch for the sick and for children. Its move into the dessert pages, as here, follows the same path taken by tapioca and arrowroot: cheap thickeners that turned out to make agreeable puddings when enriched with milk, egg yolks and sugar. The recipe's real interest is the branding. Books like this one were produced by the Larkin Company of Buffalo, a mail-order soap manufacturer that expanded into groceries, extracts and household goods sold through a premium and club-buying scheme; the cookbook exists to put Larkin sago and Larkin orange extract into the pantry, and the brand name is repeated in the method rather than left in the ingredient list. Boiled custard under a browned meringue was standard American dessert construction of the period, the same architecture as a lemon meringue pie or a queen of puddings, with the sago standing in for breadcrumbs or pastry.