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Dessert

A Tansey Pudding of Ground Rice

A pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, rose water, and spinach juice.

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 ↓

A Tansey Pudding of Ground Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the mixture

  1. Boil the ground rice in milk until soft.

  2. Add butter, beaten eggs, sugar, and rose water, and mix well.

  3. Beat spinach in a mortar.

  4. Squeeze out the juice.

  5. Add the juice to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Cover a dish with well-buttered writing paper.

  2. Pour the mixture into the dish.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with Seville or sweet orange cut into quarters.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together518 recipes

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

  4. Rice + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Ground rice
Its starch swells and thickens the milk, giving the pudding body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that softens the rice and makes the pudding creamy.
Eggs
Set as they bake, binding the pudding into a firm, sliceable custard.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the milk and eggs.
Spinach juice
Adds green color to the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake in a moderate oven for 45 minutes. Egg proteins set with gentle, even heat. Too hot or too long makes the egg curdle and weep, leaving the pudding grainy and watery rather than smooth.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, milk, butter, egg, sugar, rose. 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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