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Dessert

Tansey Pudding

A sweet rice pudding flavored with tansy leaves, spinach juice, rose water, and orange.

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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the pudding

  1. Boil the ground rice in milk until soft.

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

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

  4. Cover the dish with buttered parchment paper and pour the mixture into the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 45 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

  2. When serving, garnish with orange 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. Rose + orangetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together876 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Rice + orangetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

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 into a soft, set body as it cooks.
Eggs
Set the pudding during baking and add richness and structure.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich, tender texture and flavour.
Milk
Cooks with the ground rice to form the base of the pudding.
Sugar
Sweetens the pudding and balances the herbal flavours.

The step that matters

Boil the ground rice in milk until soft. Ground rice must be fully cooked before baking, because starch that is not gelatinized stays grainy and will not give a smooth, tender set.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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