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Dessert

Tansy Pudding

A pudding made with almonds, rose-water, crumbled French roll, butter, rose syrup, sugar, milk or cream, 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

Make the custard base

  1. Blanch and heat the almonds with rose-water.

  2. Add the crumbled roll, melted butter, syrup of roses, and sugar to a stewpan with boiling milk or cream.

  3. Let it boil, then pour into a basin and cool.

Finish the pudding

  1. Once cold, mix in the beaten eggs, tansy juice, and spinach juice.

  2. 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

Eggs
Set the pudding and bind it into a firm, custard-like texture when cooked.
French roll
Absorbs the liquid and gives the pudding body and a soft crumb.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and a smooth, tender mouthfeel.
Milk or cream
Forms the liquid base that carries the other ingredients and gives a creamy texture.
Almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and body to the base once blanched and heated.

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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