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Spinach Pudding

A baked spinach custard with bread, meat, onions, eggs, butter, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,025 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Spinach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach and bread

  1. Wash the spinach and boil it in water for a few minutes.

  2. Strain the spinach, pour cold water over it, wring it out, and chop it.

  3. Soak the bread in milk, wring it out, and add it to the chopped spinach.

Make the batter

  1. Add the chopped meat remnants, stewed onion, and chopped parsley.

  2. Beat the egg yolks with the butter until foamy, then add to the mixture.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and stir well.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into a form and boil in a kettle of boiling water for 15 minutes.

  2. Transfer the covered kettle to a Caloric oven for 2½ hours.

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. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Spinach + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the main bulk and green flavour, and its moisture must be wrung out so the pudding sets.
Bread
Soaked in milk, it adds body and softness, helping the pudding hold together.
Egg yolks
Enrich the batter and help it set into a firm, custardy texture when heated.
Egg whites
Folded in whipped, they lighten the batter and help it rise and stay tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a softer texture and smoother mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites trap air when beaten, and folding gently keeps that air in the batter. Stirring them in hard deflates the foam, which leads to a denser pudding with less lift.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, bread, milk, meat, butter, parsley, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, bread, milk, meat, butter, parsley, 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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