Name: Tansey Pudding
Ingredients: Naples biscuits; eggs; cream; sugar; tansey leaves; spinach; butter; wine sauce

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

Make a rich batter with crushed Naples biscuits, eggs, cream, and a little sugar.
Chop a few tansey leaves and spinach to give the mixture a green color.
Set the mixture in a double boiler over boiling water until thick.
Pour into a buttered basin or mold and tie securely.
Boil for 45 minutes.
Let it stand for a few minutes, then turn out and 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.

Biscuit + spinachtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together58 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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

Swap the spinach

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

Shallotfits about as well
Mustardfits about as well
Chivefits about as well
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.