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Sago Gruel
2 tablespoons sago. Sugar 1 pint cold water Soak the sago for an hour in cold water sufficient to cover it; add the pint of water; place over a slow fire and stir until the sago is dissolved and becomes thickened. Sweeten to taste, and if too thick add a little boiling water.
If desired, add flavoring and a little nutmeg.
An invalid's gruel of the old school, thin enough to drink from a cup. The ingredient list has come through garbled — the sago quantity is missing — so treat the method as the recipe and the proportions as something to judge by eye.
- Missing quantityOnly "Sugar 1 pint cold water" survives of the ingredient list, and no amount of sago is given. Period gruel recipes commonly use something like 1 to 2 tablespoons of sago to a pint of water; the larger amount gives a spoonable gruel, the smaller a drinkable one.
- What sago isPearl sago is starch extracted from the pith of tropical palms, sold as small opaque beads. Tapioca pearls of similar size behave much the same and are far easier to find; both go from chalky to translucent as they cook.
- The soak mattersThe hour in cold water is not optional padding. Sago beads hydrate slowly, and unsoaked pearls stay hard in the centre while the outside dissolves into slime.
- Slow fire, constant stirring"A slow fire" means the lowest steady heat you have. Sago starch catches and scorches readily, and a scorched note is impossible to stir out — the gruel is meant to taste of nothing much at all.
- Judging donenessThe recipe asks you to cook until the sago is dissolved and the mixture thickened; the beads should turn translucent with no white speck at the core before they break down. Reckon on roughly 15 to 20 minutes after the soak, longer for larger pearls.
- It thickens on standingSago sets up considerably as it cools, which is why the recipe allows for thinning with boiling water. Add the water boiling, not cold, or you will get lumps.
- FlavoringThe word is left open; candidates in period cookery include lemon or orange peel, a little wine or sherry, rose water, or vanilla. The nutmeg should be grated fresh and used with restraint; pre-ground nutmeg is duller and easier to overdo.
- YieldA pint of water makes two invalid-sized servings of roughly a cup each. It does not keep well — refrigerated gruel turns stiff and weepy overnight.
Gruels sit in a corner of the old cookbooks that has almost vanished: food for the sick, the very young and the very old, prized for being bland, warm and easy to swallow at a time when a household nursed its own invalids at home. Sago reached European and American kitchens through the colonial trade in Southeast Asian palm starch, and by the nineteenth century it was a standard sickroom staple alongside arrowroot, barley water and beef tea — all of them thin, starchy and thought to be strengthening. The same sago turns up elsewhere in period books as a pudding thickener.