Sago Soup
INGREDIENTS for soup for 8 or 10 persons.-5 oz. of sago, 2 quarts of medium or cheap stock. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 3d.
Wash the sago in boiling water, add it, by degrees, to the boiling stock, and simmer till the sago is entirely dissolved and forms a sort of jelly.
TIME.-Nearly an hour.
SEASONABLE all the year.
Note. The yolks of 2 eggs, beaten up with a little cream, previously boiled, and added at the moment of serving, much improves this soup.
A plain thickened stock soup of the sort Victorian kitchens made from whatever broth was on hand. The only real technique in it is the egg-and-cream liaison at the end.
- The hinge: the liaison must not boilBeat the two yolks with the cream, then temper them with a ladle of the hot soup before stirring the mixture in off the heat. Returning it to a boil will scramble the yolks and leave the soup grainy rather than velvety.
- Sago, and what to use insteadSago is starch from the pith of the sago palm, sold as small hard pearls. Pearl tapioca of the same size behaves almost identically and is far easier to find; both swell and turn translucent as they cook.
- 5 oz. of sagoRoughly three-quarters of a cup to a cup of dry pearls, depending on pearl size, to 2 quarts of stock, which gives a distinctly thick, near-jellied soup by Victorian taste. Half that amount produces something closer to what a modern table expects.
- "Medium or cheap stock"Beeton gives a graded series of stocks, from rich strong stock down to a cheap stock made from bones and trimmings. Any decent unsalted chicken or beef stock does the job; season at the end.
- Washing in boiling waterThis rinses off loose surface starch so the pearls stay separate rather than clumping. Do it in a sieve and add the pearls to the stock gradually, stirring, or they will sink and weld to the pan base.
- Timing"Nearly an hour" may reflect coarser sago than is sold now; modern small pearls are usually clear and soft in 20 to 30 minutes at a bare simmer. Note that Beeton wants the sago entirely dissolved into a jelly rather than merely translucent, so expect longer if following the original. Stir often near the end as it thickens.
- Yield and costThe recipe is given for eight to ten persons. At 1s. 3d. average cost it was an inexpensive soup, a way of stretching stock across a table.
Sago reached British kitchens as a colonial import, starch washed from the trunk pith of palms grown across Southeast Asia and the Malay Archipelago, and by the nineteenth century it sat on grocers' shelves alongside tapioca, arrowroot and semolina as one of the cheap thickening starches. It had a double reputation: an economical way to give body to thin stock, and a staple of invalid cookery, since it was thought bland and easily digested. Beeton's version, like every recipe in the book, carries an average cost, and it is offered with an optional enrichment of yolks and cream, the standard French liaison, added only at the last moment for households that could afford it.