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Tansy pudding
Blanch and pound a quarter of a pound of Jordan almonds; put them into a stew pan, add a gill of the syrup of roses, the crumb of a French roll, some grated nutmeg, half a glass of brandy, two tablespoonfuls of tansy juice, 3 oz. of fresh butter, and some slices of citron. Pour over it a pint and a half of boiling cream or milk, sweeten, and when cold, mix it; add the juice of a lemon, and 8 eggs beaten. It may be either boiled or baked.
This is a genuine eighteenth-century-style tansy, and the herb that gives it its name is the problem. The notes below explain the terms and then why the dish is not one to attempt.
- Tansy juice is the hazardTanacetum vulgare is rich in thujone, a neurotoxin that in quantity causes vomiting, convulsions and liver and kidney damage, and it acts as a violent uterine stimulant. Two tablespoonfuls of expressed juice from the fresh leaf is not a flavouring trace but a substantial dose, and thujone content varies wildly between plants, so there is no way to judge strength from the page.
- Uncooked in effectThe custard is mixed cold and then boiled or baked, but cooking cannot be relied on to remove thujone, and the finished pudding should not be assumed to be safer than the raw mixture.
- Tansy is not a culinary herb todayIt is restricted as a food additive in the United States and elsewhere except where the finished product is thujone-free. If you want a green herb custard of this kind, use a current recipe built on spinach or spinach and mint, which is what nineteenth-century cooks were already substituting.
- Jordan almondsNot the sugared confection sold under that name now. Jordan almonds were large sweet almonds, usually said to have come from Malaga; period receipts commonly direct that they be pounded with a little liquid to stop them oiling, though this one says only to blanch and pound.
- A gillA quarter of a pint: five fluid ounces in imperial measure, four (about half a cup) in American books. Syrup of roses was a rose-petal sugar syrup kept as a household cordial and colouring, closest today to a good rose syrup from a Middle Eastern grocer.
- The crumb of a French rollThe soft interior of a small white roll with the crust discarded, only an ounce or two of crumb, used as the thickener in custards of this kind before flour and cornflour became usual.
- CitronThe candied peel of Citrus medica, thick and firm, sold in slabs and sliced rather than diced. Still available in baking sections around the winter holidays.
A tansy began in medieval and Tudor England as an Easter dish, a fried egg mixture coloured and bittered with the juice of young tansy leaves; the bitterness is often linked to the bitter herbs of Passover, a traditional explanation repeated by later writers rather than a documented origin, and to a widespread belief that a spring purge cleared the body after Lent. By the time of receipts like this one the dish had drifted upward in richness, away from a herb omelette toward a baked or boiled almond custard with brandy, citron and rose syrup, in which the tansy survives mostly as a name and a colour. Nineteenth-century cookery books increasingly print tansies made with spinach juice for green, a little mint for aroma and no tansy at all. The plant remained in the household stillroom long after it left the kitchen, used as a strewing herb against flies and as a folk remedy whose principal recorded effects are poisonings.