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Sago with Cream
Place in a small enamelled saucepan a half pint water and half pint milk, with a half teaspoon salt; place on fire and as soon as it comes to a boil add six ounces sago. Mix well with a wooden spoon and let boil twenty minutes, occasionally stirring meanwhile, pour into a deep hot dish and serve with cold cream or milk and powdered sugar separately.
A plain nursery-and-invalid pudding built on one starch and two liquids. The only real difficulties are the starch itself, which most cooks no longer keep, and a liquid ratio that runs much drier than modern practice.
- Liquid ratioSix ounces of sago is roughly a cup, and a cup of pearls into two cups of liquid gives a stiff, almost sliceable mass rather than a spoonable pudding. Most modern sago and tapioca cookery uses four to six times the liquid by volume; if you want a loose pudding, expect to add another cup or two of hot milk as it thickens.
- What sago isTrue sago is starch extracted from the pith of the sago palm, sold as small hard pearls in Southeast Asian and South Asian groceries. Pearl tapioca, from cassava, behaves similarly and is the usual substitute; instant or minute tapioca is not, and will dissolve to paste in twenty minutes.
- Stirring and scorchingThe original calls for an enamelled pan; whatever the reason, starch settles and catches. Stir along the bottom every few minutes and keep the heat at a bare simmer once the pearls swell, not the full boil the recipe implies.
- Doneness, not the clockTwenty minutes is a guide. The pearls are done when they are translucent all through with no white speck at the centre; large pearls can take thirty to forty minutes and benefit from a half-hour soak in cold water first.
- SaltA half teaspoon in a pint of liquid reads high for a sweet dish because the sugar is served separately. If you intend to sweeten in the pan, cut the salt to a quarter teaspoon.
- ServingSago sets hard as it cools and will thicken visibly in the dish. Serve it hot, and thin any leftovers with milk when reheating.
- YieldAs written, four small servings. Treated as a loose pudding with the extra milk, it stretches to six.
Sago reached European kitchens as a colonial import, milled from the pith of palms in the Malay Archipelago and shipped as dried pearls, and by the nineteenth century it sat alongside arrowroot and tapioca in the standard list of light, digestible starches prescribed for children, convalescents and the elderly. That reputation is why it appears in general cookbooks with recipes as bare as this one: the point was not flavour but a bland, easily swallowed food, with the cream and sugar handed round separately so the dish could be made rich or plain to suit the eater. In parts of its home regions sago has long been a staple starch rather than an invalid's food.