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Florentine Pie

A baked pie with a cooked rice and Parmesan crust, filled with egg whites, cheese, milk and spinach.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Florentine Pie

Oven325°F
Time45 minutes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Heat oven to 325°F.

  2. Spray a 9 x 1 1/4 inch pie plate with cooking spray.

  3. Mix rice, Parmesan cheese, 1 tablespoon chopped green onion tops and 1 egg white with a fork.

  4. Press mixture evenly on bottom and up side of pie plate, leaving no holes.

  5. Bake 5 minutes.

Make the filling and bake

  1. Beat 8 egg whites until almost peaking.

  2. Stir in remaining ingredients.

  3. Pour into rice shell.

  4. Bake about 45 minutes or until a knife inserted in center comes out clean.

  5. Serve with additional Parmesan cheese if desired.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

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. Nutmeg + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Onion + spinachtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped and folded into the filling, they give the pie a light, airy, custard-like set.
Hot cooked rice
Forms the crust, holding its shape once pressed and lightly baked in the pie plate.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the rice crust brown and firm up.
Shredded white cheese
Melts into the filling, adding richness and body to the custard.
Skim milk
Provides liquid that sets with the egg proteins into a tender custard.
Spinach
Supplies the main vegetable bulk and moisture, which must be pressed dry to avoid a watery filling.

The step that matters

Press the spinach dry. Excess water from thawed spinach dilutes the custard and can make the pie soggy or loose, so the spinach should be well pressed before it is stirred in.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, egg, cheese, milk, pepper, nutmeg, spinach):

  1. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, egg, cheese, milk, pepper, nutmeg, spinach. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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