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Dessert

Royal Pudding

A baked sago pudding with butter, sugar, eggs, topped with jam and frothy powdered sugar frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Royal Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Wash the sago and place it in a saucepan with the milk.

  2. Stand the saucepan in boiling water until the sago swells.

  3. While hot, stir in the butter and sugar.

  4. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  5. Pour the mixture into a pudding dish.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes until set.

  2. Remove from the oven.

  3. Let the pudding cool.

Top and finish

  1. Beat the egg whites with powdered sugar until frothy.

  2. Spread jam over the pudding.

  3. Top the pudding with the frosting.

  4. Return to the oven for 2 minutes to lightly brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + raspberrytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + raspberrytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,308 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sago
Swells in hot milk to form the thick, set body of the pudding.
Egg yolks
Enrich the custard and help it set firmly when baked.
Egg whites
Whipped with sugar to form a light, frothy topping that browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel to the pudding.
Milk
Hydrates the sago and forms the custard base that sets as it bakes.

The step that matters

Returning the pudding to the oven for the topping. Meringue-style toppings can weep or over-brown quickly; two minutes is enough to lightly colour the frothy whites, since the sugar caramelises fast at oven heat.

Swap the raspberry

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, butter, sugar, egg):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Raspberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, sugar, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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