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 pudding base
Wash the sago and place it in a quart of milk in a double boiler.
Cook until the sago is fully swollen.
While hot, stir in the butter and sugar.
Let the mixture cool, then add the beaten egg yolks.
Bake and top
Pour into a pudding dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 to 45 minutes.
Allow to cool.
Beat the egg whites with loaf sugar until frothy.
Spread jelly or jam over the pudding, then top with the frothy egg whites.
Brown lightly in the oven.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
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Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together88,785 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.
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 thicken and give the pudding its body.
- Egg yolks
- Enrich the custard and help set the pudding as it bakes.
- Egg whites
- Whipped with sugar to form a light topping that browns in the oven.
- Butter
- Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture.
- Milk
- Cooks with the sago to form the creamy base of the pudding.
The step that matters
Cooling before adding the egg yolks. Adding beaten yolks to very hot mixture can scramble them. Letting it cool first keeps the yolks smooth and helps the pudding set evenly.
“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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