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Dessert

A Tansey Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

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 pudding base

  1. Boil the ground rice in milk until soft.

  2. Add butter, beaten eggs, sugar, and rose water to the rice mixture.

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

  4. Mix all ingredients well and pour into a buttered dish covered with writing paper.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Serve with Seville or sweet orange 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 and gives the pudding its soft, set body.
Eggs
Set when baked, giving the pudding structure and a custard-like texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a soft, tender mouthfeel to the pudding.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the rice swells in and that the eggs set within.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavours of the tansy and rose water.

The step that matters

Bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C). Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Too hot or too long can make the pudding curdle, dry out, or turn rubbery, so check that the centre is just set.

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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