Important: Safety Warning
This page prescribes plants as medicine according to pre-modern medical theory. Several of the plants named are toxic, correct identification is difficult, and the doses given have no scientific basis. Do not ingest or apply any preparation described here.
This page presents medical treatment from an era before modern medicine. The remedies described are ineffective against the conditions named, and some of the ingredients or doses are harmful. Do not use them to treat any illness; consult a qualified medical professional.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Home › The Doctor's Kitchen › Sago
Sago
GROWING naturally in Japan, and the East Indian Islands, whilst also cultivated in English hot-houses, is the Sagus Palm, which yields by its gummy pith our very serviceable Sago. Both it, and the Tapioca, as culinary esculents confer animal warmth by their abundant starch, over 86 per cent being comprised in the former grain; likewise Arrowroot consists chiefly of starch (about 82 per cent). These several foods supply in an agreeable form starch (not eatable by itself) which becomes completely absorbed within the intestines, so that on this account they are specially valuable. If required as a complete nutriment in health, they must be accompanied by such proteids as exist in light animal food, together with some fat. "There was an old man of Iago, Whose food was restricted to Sago:
Oh! how he did jump When the Doctor said plump, 'To a roast leg of mutton you may go." "Tamdudum senior quidam de rure Tobagus Invito madidas carpserat ore dapes :
Sed medicus tandem-non injucunda locutus- 'Assæ, dixit, oves sunt tibi cæna, senex."' Sago is of particular service as helping to nourish infirm old persons, and children. The Indians reserve their finest Sago for such cases, and for invalids. Its fecula, washed from the plentiful pith, is very demulcent, and more digestible than the starch of rice. Such fecula never ferments in the stomach, and is very suitable for patients liable to waste because of a feverish state of body. Portland Sago, an English variety, is a farina extracted from the corm, or tuber, of our hedgerow Arum maculatum ("lords, and ladies"), or Wake-robin, a familiar wayside plant. This fecula was formerly prepared largely therefrom in the Island of Portland. To make a light restorative soup which never disagrees, or ferments in the stomach: “Boil half an ounce of small Sago in a pint of home-made beef-tea, (or of water in which a dessertspoonful of Liebig's meat extract is dissolved), until it is clear, then add half a pint of milk, with a little seasoning; boil up, and pour it over the beaten-up yolk of an egg in a bowl; stir, and serve." The late Queen Victoria was particularly fond of Sago pudding, with which she took powdered cinnamon as a condiment. Similarly the late Lord Tennyson had a penchant for rice pudding.
For a Sago soufflé : "Take one pint of new milk, two and a half ounces of butter, an ounce and a half of sugar, two ounces of pearl Sago, an ounce and a half of blanched almonds (chopped very fine); mix all these together, and put over the fire, cooking the mixture for fifteen minutes, whilst constantly stirring; then remove from the fire, and let it cool. Beat three eggs, and pour in a little thereof at a time until all is used thus; and perhaps some almond flavouring may be discreetly added. Put the mixture into a pudding dish, and bake for half an hour. Sift a little powdered sugar over it, and serve immediately in the dish in which it has been baked." Tapioca is another food of like character, being pure starch, as prepared from the root of the Cassava, or Manioc plant, which grows in tropical America, Asia, and Africa. It is more easy of digestion than any other kind of farinaceous nourishment, and less liable to produce acidity. When the root is freshly cut a milky juice exudes which is highly poisonous; but after this is withdrawn the remainder of the root yields Tapioca starch, which is in no way whatever deleterious. Its agglomerate masses distinguish it from the regular shaped grains of Sago. Our chief supplies of Tapioca are imported from Brazil. Whether boiled in water, or milk, or steeped in boiling water, and then baked, it makes, when sweetened, and flavoured to taste, a very palatable, and light food, which is to be highly commended for invalids, and children: (see also page 564.)
Two workable dishes sit inside this reference entry: a sago-and-beef-tea restorative soup and a baked sago "soufflé". Both are period invalid cookery, and both need a little translation before they behave.
- What sago isTrue sago is starch from the pith of the sago palm (Metroxylon sagu), sold as small hard pearls in Asian groceries. Most Western supermarkets now stock tapioca pearls instead; they are interchangeable here in flavour and thickening power, though tapioca goes stickier and more translucent.
- Imperial measuresA pint in this book is 20 fl oz, so scale up if you are working in US cups. Half an ounce of small sago is about a tablespoon; two ounces of pearl sago is a scant third of a cup.
- Liebig's meat extractA dark, salty concentrated beef paste, of the same family as Bovril. A teaspoon of beef bouillon concentrate in a pint of water gives much the same thing. It is very salty, so hold back on the "little seasoning" until the end.
- Soak the pearlsNeither recipe says so, but modern pearls benefit from 20-30 minutes in cold water first. Otherwise the centres stay chalky and white while the outsides dissolve into slime. "Until it is clear" is the real test in the soup: the pearls should be translucent through the middle.
- The hinge: tempering the yolkThe soup is poured over a raw beaten yolk and stirred — the yolk thickens and enriches but must not scramble. Pour slowly, in a thin stream, whisking the whole time, and do not return the bowl to the heat. If you are cooking for someone genuinely frail, use a pasteurised egg, since a single yolk hit with hot liquid is not reliably brought to a safe temperature.
- Oven for the souffléNo temperature is given, and the recipe names no oven setting at all; 350F/180C for half an hour suits a pint-sized dish. Note that this is not a soufflé in the modern sense — the whole eggs go in unseparated, so expect a set baked pudding with a lightly puffed top, not a risen one.
- Almond flavouringBlanched sweet almonds are simply nuts and fine. "Almond flavouring" of the period often meant bitter almond essence; use modern almond extract, sparingly, a quarter-teaspoon at most for this quantity.
- Portland sago is not an ingredientThe farina described as coming from Arum maculatum (lords-and-ladies, wake-robin) is a historical curiosity only. The fresh plant and its berries are acridly poisonous and it should not be gathered or eaten.
- YieldThe soup makes about three cups, one or two invalid servings. The soufflé fills a 1-quart dish and serves three to four.
This entry comes from a genre that dominated late-Victorian and Edwardian domestic medicine: invalid cookery, the art of feeding the sick, the very old and the very young on things thought neither to "ferment" nor to tax the stomach. Sago, tapioca and arrowroot were its holy trinity, valued precisely because they are nearly pure starch and almost nothing else — the author's percentages are roughly right, and his warning that they must be paired with "proteids" and fat shows a period awareness that a starch gruel alone starves a patient. Hence the beef tea and egg yolk propping up the soup. The reference to "the late Queen Victoria" dates the writing to after 1901, and her fondness for sago pudding with cinnamon is one of those royal domestic details that circulated widely in the press and cookery columns of the day; treat it as received anecdote rather than documented fact. The nonsense verse and its Latin rendering are a joke about the invalid diet itself: the patient's reward for recovery is release from sago back to roast mutton.