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Milk Sago
4 ounces of sago 1 quart milk Nutmeg Sugar Prepare this exactly as for milk rice. Any other flavoring can be substituted for the nutmeg. A strip of thin lemon peel simmered for the last half hour in the milk makes an agreeable flavoring.
A plain milk pudding of the sort that once carried a whole chapter of "cold sweets." The original leans on a cross-reference to milk rice, so the method has to be reconstructed: sago and milk, cooked slowly until the grains are clear, then chilled.
- Sago itselfPearl sago is starch from the pith of the sago palm, sold in small hard beads. Tapioca pearls of the same size behave almost identically and are the usual substitute; the finished pudding will be a shade more gelatinous.
- The measure4 ounces is a weight, not a volume — roughly 2/3 cup of pearls to a quart (4 cups) of milk. That is a generous proportion of starch; expect a spoonable pudding that thickens noticeably, and may set fairly firm, as it cools.
- Sugar is unspecifiedThe original leaves the amount to the cook, as period milk puddings often did. About 1/3 cup for the quart gives a modestly sweet dessert; add it partway through so it does not slow the grains' softening.
- The hingeSago must cook until every bead is translucent to the centre. A chalky white core means raw starch, and no amount of chilling will fix it — it stays gritty.
- ScorchingSago sinks and settles. Use a heavy pan or a buttered dish set in a water bath, and stir the first half hour of stovetop cooking often; milk and settled starch catch quickly.
- Nutmeg and lemonGrate nutmeg over the surface at the end rather than stirring it through. The strip of lemon peel should be pared thin with no white pith, and lifted out before serving.
- ServingServes four to six. As a cold dessert it wants stewed fruit, jam or a spoonful of cream alongside; on its own the flavour is very quiet.
Milk puddings thickened with sago, tapioca, rice or semolina were the backbone of British and American nursery and invalid cookery from the mid-nineteenth century onward — cheap, bland, filling and easy on the digestion. Sago reached Western kitchens through the colonial trade in Southeast Asian palm starch, and by the time of this book it was an ordinary grocery item sold in pearl and powdered forms. Its appearance in a meatless cookbook is straightforward: a quart of milk and a few ounces of starch made a substantial sweet course without recourse to suet or gelatine. The book's habit of writing one full method and then referring back to it — "prepare this exactly as for milk rice" — was standard economy in printed cookery of the period.