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Sago Soup
Wash one-fourth pound of sago, and boil it for one hour in plenty of water, adding a small piece of stick cinnamon, the rind of one lemon, and a pinch of salt. At the end of that time mix with the sago three or four slices of lemon, sufficient red wine to make the required quantity of soup, and sugar to taste. Stir the soup over the fire until boiling, then remove the lemon-peel and cinnamon. Sprinkle some powdered sugar and cinnamon in with the soup and serve it.
A sweet wine soup of the German type, thickened with sago rather than flour. The chief adjustment is time: modern sago is far more refined than what Oscar's kitchen bought by the sack.
- Sago itselfSago is starch extracted from the pith of tropical palms, sold as small hard pearls. It is not tapioca, though tapioca pearls behave much the same way and are the easiest substitute if sago is unavailable at an Asian grocer.
- The hour of boilingPresent-day pearl sago softens and turns translucent much faster than the recipe assumes, roughly 15 to 30 minutes of gentle simmering depending on the size of the pearl; a full hour risks reducing it to paste and clouding the soup. Cook until no white speck remains in the centre of a pearl, then stop.
- One-fourth poundFour ounces, about two-thirds of a cup of pearls. Sago swells enormously, so "plenty of water" means at least two quarts, and stirring now and then keeps the pearls from welding to the bottom.
- "Sufficient red wine"Genuinely open-ended, since the finished volume is left to the cook. For four servings, roughly two cups of dry red wine to two cups of the sago and its liquid gives a soup that tastes of wine without being harsh; add it off the boil and bring it back up only briefly.
- Lemon rindPare it in strips with a peeler and leave the white pith behind, which turns bitter over a long simmer. The strips and the cinnamon stick come out before serving, as directed.
- SugarSweeten after the wine goes in, not before, since the acidity of the wine changes how sweet the soup reads. Start at three tablespoons for four servings and work up.
- ServingThis is a sweet soup rather than a savoury course. The recipe fixes no yield, since the quantity of wine is left to the cook. The final dusting of powdered sugar and cinnamon is stirred in just before the soup goes out, as directed.
Sweet wine soups thickened with sago, semolina or rice were a fixture of nineteenth-century German and Austrian cooking, where Weinsuppe could open a formal dinner or close a light supper. This soup belongs to a sweet-soup category that has since dropped almost entirely out of American use. Sago arrived in Europe as a colonial import from the Malay Archipelago and was valued as much for invalid cookery as for the table, being bland, easily digested and cheap to thicken with; by the time this book was compiled it was a standard pantry starch, and household manuals of the period often treat sago and tapioca as broadly interchangeable.