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Spinach Pudding

Spinach pudding is a savory custard made with spinach, butter, stock, béchamel sauce, forcemeat, egg yolks, pepper, and salt, garnished with turnip, carrot, and potato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach until tender, then drain and cool it.

  2. Chop the spinach and place it in an enamelled saucepan.

Make the mixture

  1. Add the butter, stock, and béchamel sauce to the saucepan and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then mix in the forcemeat, egg yolks, pepper, and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Fill a mold with the mixture and cook for 30 minutes.

  2. Turn out the pudding onto a dish and garnish with shaped pieces of turnip, carrot, and potato.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Spinach + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help it set firm when cooked.
Forcemeat
Adds body and a savoury, dense texture to the pudding.
Béchamel sauce
Adds creaminess and moisture, holding the spinach together.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Spinach
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives its green colour and earthy flavour.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks added to a hot mixture can scramble and curdle. Cooling first lets the yolks thicken the pudding smoothly as it cooks.

Swap the turnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, butter, sauce, veal, egg, pepper, carrot):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Turnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, sauce, veal, egg, pepper, carrot. 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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