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Apple Sago Pudding
Mrs. K.
One cup sago in a quart of tepid water, with a pinch of salt, soaked for one hour; six or eight apples, pared and cored, or quartered, and steamed tender, and put in the pudding dish; boil and stir the sago until clear, adding water to make it thin, and pour it over the apples; this is good hot with butter and sugar, or cold with cream and sugar.
A stovetop pudding with no baking at all: the sago is cooked to a clear jelly and poured over steamed apples. Almost everything depends on the starch going fully translucent.
- Cook the sago until no white specks remainPearl sago is done only when every grain has turned glassy through the centre; a chalky core means raw starch and a gritty pudding. Expect 20-30 minutes of gentle simmering with frequent stirring, and keep adding hot water as it thickens, since it will sieze and scorch on the pan bottom.
- What sago isPearl sago is starch extracted from the pith of the sago palm, sold in small hard beads in South and Southeast Asian groceries. Small pearl tapioca behaves close enough to stand in for it cup for cup; instant or minute tapioca does not, and quick-cooking varieties will turn to glue.
- MeasuresBy US measure a quart is 4 cups, giving roughly 1 cup sago to 4 cups water, plus more water during cooking; a Canadian imperial quart of the period would be nearer 5 cups, so the soaking mixture may have been looser still. Tepid means lukewarm -- warm to the hand, no more -- warm enough to speed the hour-long soak without starting to gel the starch.
- The applesSix or eight apples is roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb. Use a variety that holds shape when steamed - Braeburn, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith - because the pudding has no structure of its own and collapsed apples give you sauce.
- Steaming, not boilingSteam the pared apples over water in a covered pan; quartered pieces may be tender in 10-15 minutes, while whole cored apples can take 20-30 depending on size and variety. Boiling waterlogs them and thins the sago when everything is combined.
- Hot or cold are different dishesServed warm it is a loose, glossy pudding. Chilled, the sago sets to a softer jelly around the fruit, though how firmly depends on how much water was added, and the recipe says to keep it thin. The recipe gives hot with butter and sugar and cold with cream and sugar as equal alternatives; if you want it set, chill it in the serving dish for several hours.
- SeasoningBeyond the pinch of salt the sago itself is flat, so the sugar goes on at the table. A strip of lemon peel or a cinnamon stick in the cooking water is a period-appropriate addition.
- YieldServes six to eight as written.
Sago reached nineteenth-century North American kitchens as a cheap imported starch, shipped in pearled form from the East Indies and sold in the same corner of the grocer's as tapioca, arrowroot and cornstarch. Cookbooks of the period often seem to treat all four as near-substitutes, and a starch jelly was considered light, digestible and gentle - which is likely why sago gruel and sago posset appear in household medical chapters as well as in the dessert pages. The Home Cook Book (Toronto, 1877) was compiled from contributions by named local women, which is why this one carries only "Mrs. K." and the terseness of a note passed between neighbours who already knew what cooked sago should look like. The pairing with apples may well be thrift: the fruit was in the cellar, the starch was in the cupboard, and neither the oven nor eggs were needed.