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Dessert

Tansey Pudding

A sweet pudding made with 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) · 7 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

  1. Pour the mixture into a buttered basin or mold.

  2. Tie the basin securely and place it in a double saucepan over boiling water.

  3. Cook for 45 minutes until thickened.

Serve

  1. Let it stand for a few minutes, then turn it out onto a plate.

  2. 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. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Cream + spinachtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard, binding the crumbs and cream into a firm pudding as they cook.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the pudding soft and tender after setting.
Naples biscuits
Provide the crumb base that gives the pudding body and structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps balance the flavor of the eggs and cream.

The step that matters

Cook for 45 minutes until thickened. Gentle, indirect heat from boiling water in a double saucepan lets the eggs set slowly. Too-vigorous heat or a dry pan can curdle the custard or leave it rubbery, so the water should stay at a steady simmer and the basin should be tightly tied.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against biscuit, egg, cream, sugar, butter. 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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