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Dessert

Tansy and Spinach Pudding

A sweet pudding made with eggs, spinach, tansy leaves, milk, butter, sugar, brandy, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Tansy and Spinach Pudding

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the custard base

  1. Soak the bread in boiling milk until cool.

  2. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.

  3. Pound the tansy and spinach leaves, strain the juice, and mix with the eggs until green.

  4. Add brandy, sugar to taste, grated nutmeg, and fresh butter to the mixture.

  5. Combine with the soaked bread and milk, then heat in a saucepan until hot.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour into a buttered dish and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  2. Dredge white sugar over the top before serving.

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. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks and whites set the pudding into a soft, sliceable structure as it bakes.
Spinach leaves
Provide the green colour and a earthy, vegetal flavour to the custard.
Bread crumb
Soaked in milk, it absorbs liquid and gives the pudding a soft, tender body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, more tender texture.
Caster sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the custard brown lightly on the surface.

The step that matters

Combine with the soaked bread and milk, then heat until hot. Heating the egg mixture gently, rather than boiling it, keeps the eggs from scrambling and curdling, so the pudding stays smooth and sets evenly in the oven.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg, brandy, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, milk, sugar, butter, nutmeg, brandy, bread. 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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