A former royal chef has lifted the lid on the one food never given to royal babies – and it will come as a surprise to many parents.

Darren McGrady worked at Buckingham Palace from 1982 to 1993, and at Kensington Palace from 1993 until Princess Diana’s death in 1997. Over the course of his career, he cooked for the late Queen, Princess Diana and Princes William and Harry. Speaking previously to TODAY.com, Darren admitted: “I’ve certainly never seen packaged food with any of the royal babies. Why would they buy packaged food when the queen has 20 personal chefs?”

Instead, he recalled pureeing William and Harry’s very first meals of steamed apples and pears gathered from the Queen’s Sandringham country retreat, noting that the purees had to be sieved twice to be absolutely sure no lumps remained. “As they got older, you’d have one chef in the kitchen doing the chicken, one doing the veg, and then it would all be blended together; it was a major operation cooking for them,” he said.

One of Prince William’s very favourite desserts was banana flan, evolved from the royals’ childhood meals of pureed banana and custard. Other sweet treats included chocolate biscuit cake, which William and Kate famously served at their wedding, and peanut butter and jelly muffins, which the boys requested after trying them at Disney World.

And while William and Harry’s nanny was on hand to make sure the boys ate their veggies, their palates were just like any other child, Darren revealed. “If it was left to the boys, it would be cheeseburgers, pizza, chicken nuggets, and loaded jacket potatoes,” he said. Despite the grand setting, their mother Princess Diana preferred to take a more informal approach to mealtimes, letting her children eat meals on trays in front of the TV, and once cancelling their planned dinner to take them out to McDonalds – because they wanted the Happy Meal toys.

In another interview with HELLO, Darren said of the late Princess: “She wasn’t strict at all. She let them be boys, young boys! There was always a battle between her and Nanny. Nanny would say, ‘No, they’re eating their dinner, they’re having cabbage.’ “And the Princess would say, ‘No, if they’re with me and they want loaded potato skins and fried chicken then they can have that. And if they don’t eat it and they still want pudding, they can have that too!’ She was much more relaxed than Nanny.”

He continued: “They liked comfort food dishes. They loved banana flan, anything with banana really, banana ice cream. They loved things like mixed grills, burgers, pizza, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken and cream chicken sauce… They were royal children but they still had children’s palates.”