Steamed Pudding Recipes - long (OOP) was Re: SC -

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

Bear wrote:

all sorts of useful info on tapioca and sago, snipped.

>While Indonesians may use sago and tapioca interchangeably, after a little
>quick research, I am certain they know the difference in origins between the
>two starches.

My claim was not that they are the same and i do not question your 
explanation in the slightest.  More data is always better. I kinda 
knew it, since long ago when i was making more SEAsian food i checked 
up on various starchy tubers.

But scientific reality is sometimes not identical with "mundane" 
practice. For example, what are called yams and sweet potatoes in the 
US - neither is actually a yam, and both are varieties of the sweet 
potato, but the vernacular is different from the scientific language.

Since the Brits colonized Malaya, now Malaysia, and they brought many 
things to it and brought many things back to England from it, I 
suspect that in this recipe "pearl tapioca" is being called for 
because of this interchange.

Ketjap, for example, in Malay (and i think the word and the product 
came to Malaya from China) it's soy sauce; ketchup (or catsup) in 
modern English is a seasoned tomato sauce. But there's a history that 
passes through the British Empire between the two very different 
products with virtually the same name which explains how the word 
came to be applied to the tomato product.

So i can imagine tapioca being called sago if the recipe at some 
point was filtered through a SE Asian connection. Note that I'm not 
saying it's a SE Asian dish.

Lee Gwenn Booth wrote when posting the recipe:
Well, the first book that came to hand is the "'Central' Cookery 
Book", which has been used to teach cooking to high school children 
in Tasmania (and, for all I know, the rest of Australia) for many 
years.  This book (15th edition published in 1976)

So here is both a British and a South East Asian connection (yes, 
Tasmania isn't exactly SE Asia, but it's in close proximity) and it 
also seems to have a venerable history, if the 15th edition was in 
1976...

Now none of this proves what i'm saying, but it is suggestive...

Anahita