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Dessert

Tansy Pudding

A sweet pudding made with almonds, rose water, crumbled French roll, butter, rose syrup, milk, eggs, tansy juice, and spinach juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 352 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Tansy Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Blanch and beat the almonds with rose water.

  2. Add the crumbled French roll, melted butter, syrup of roses, and sugar to taste.

Make the custard

  1. Combine in a saucepan with boiling milk or cream and let it boil.

  2. Pour into a basin and let it cool.

  3. Once cool, add the beaten eggs, tansy juice, and spinach juice.

Finish

  1. You can either boil or bake the mixture.

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. Almond + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Almond + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Almonds
Provide body and richness, with a fine texture when blanched and beaten.
French roll
Adds bulk and soaks up liquid, giving the pudding a softer body.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture.
Milk or cream
Supplies moisture and richness, forming the base of the custard.
Eggs
Set the mixture as they cook, giving the pudding its structure.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the eggs. Eggs added to very hot liquid can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Cooling the mixture first lets the eggs thicken it evenly into a smooth custard.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against almond, rose, butter, syrup, sugar, milk, egg. 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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