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Dessert

Tansey Pudding

A sweet pudding made from crushed Naples biscuits, eggs, cream, sugar, and tansy and spinach leaves, cooked in a double boiler.

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

  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 double boiler over boiling water and cook until thickened.

  2. Pour the thickened mixture into a buttered basin or mold and tie it securely.

  3. Boil for 45 minutes.

  4. Let it stand for a few minutes after removing from the heat.

  5. Turn out the pudding 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.

  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 pudding structure as they thicken and bind the crumbs together.
Naples biscuits
Provide the crumb body that gives the pudding its bulk and soft texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the pudding a tender, smooth texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the eggs and cream.

The step that matters

Set the mixture in a double boiler over boiling water and cook until thickened.. Eggs thicken gently at moderate heat; too much heat can curdle them and leave a grainy texture. A gentle water bath keeps the custard smooth and evenly set.

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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