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Dessert

Tansey Pudding

A custard-like pudding made with crushed Naples biscuits, eggs, cream, sugar, and chopped tansy and spinach leaves, served with wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Biscuit and spinach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Tansey Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the mixture

  1. Crush the Naples biscuits into fine crumbs.

  2. In a bowl, mix the biscuit crumbs, eggs, cream, and sugar until well combined.

  3. Chop the tansy and spinach leaves finely and add them to the mixture for color.

Cook and serve

  1. Set the mixture in a buttered basin or mold.

  2. Tie it securely and place it in a double saucepan over boiling water.

  3. Cook for 45 minutes until thickened.

  4. Let it stand for a few minutes, then turn it out onto a plate.

  5. Serve with wine sauce.

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. Biscuit + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard-like pudding as they cook, holding it together.
Naples biscuits
Provide the crumb base that gives the pudding its body.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, giving a softer, smoother texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the flavor of the pudding.

The step that matters

Cook over boiling water. Cooking gently in a double saucepan keeps the egg mixture from overheating, which would cause it to curdle or turn rubbery instead of set smoothly.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (biscuit, egg, cream, sugar, butter, wine, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, cream, sugar, butter, wine, sauce. 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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