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Dessert

Tansey Pudding of Ground Rice

A pudding made from ground rice, milk, butter, eggs, sugar, rose water, spinach juice, and tansy leaves, baked and served with citrus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Tansey Pudding of Ground Rice

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the rice base

  1. Boil the ground rice in milk until soft.

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

Add the greens and bake

  1. Blend spinach and tansy leaves in a mortar, squeeze out juice, and add to the mixture.

  2. Cover the dish with buttered paper and pour the mixture into it.

  3. Bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

  4. Serve with Seville oranges or sweet oranges quarters on top.

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
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and soft structure.
Eggs
Set during baking to bind the pudding and give it a custard-like firmness.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender texture to the pudding.
Milk
Cooks with the ground rice to form the pudding's base and provides moisture.
Spinach
Its juice adds color and a green, vegetal note to the pudding.

The step that matters

Cover the dish with buttered paper. The buttered paper shields the top from direct heat so the pudding sets through without over-browning or drying at the surface.

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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