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Dessert

Tansey Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with eggs, cream, spinach juice, tansy juice, powdered crackers or rice, wine, nutmeg, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tansey Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the eggs until very light.

  2. Mix in the cream, spinach juice, and tansy juice.

  3. Add the powdered crackers or rice, wine, nutmeg, and sugar.

  4. Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens.

Cook

  1. Pour it into a baking dish and bake, or fry it like an omelette.

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. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + ricetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together518 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the pudding into a custard-like structure as they cook.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Powdered crackers or finely pounded rice
Thickens the mixture and gives it body.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over low heat until it thickens. Eggs thicken when heated gently; too much heat can curdle them into a grainy texture. Low heat and constant stirring let the mixture thicken smoothly.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, rice, wine, nutmeg, sugar):

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, rice, wine, nutmeg, sugar. 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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