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Herb Puddings

A baked herb pudding made with parsley, spinach, lettuce hearts, mustard greens, cress, white beet leaves, chives, flour, cream, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Herb Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herbs

  1. Pick and wash the parsley, spinach, lettuce hearts, mustard greens, cress, white beet leaves, and chives.

  2. Boil the herbs together for 3 minutes, then drain and mash them finely.

  3. Mix the mashed herbs with salt and pepper.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, thin cream, and eggs to make a batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Stir the batter into the herb mixture and pour it into a dish.

  2. Cover the dish with a good crust and bake until set.

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. Lettuce + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

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

  3. Lettuce + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together261 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Spinach + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Mustard + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together587 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set the custard-like pudding as they cook, holding it together when baked.
Flour
Thickens the batter so the mashed herbs bind into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the pudding a soft, tender texture.
Parsley
Provides the main fresh green flavour and color of the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set through gentle heat; if the pudding is baked too hot or too long, the eggs over-coagulate, becoming dry, curdled and rubbery. Baking only until firm keeps it tender.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, lettuce, mustard, chive, pepper, flour, cream):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, lettuce, mustard, chive, pepper, flour, cream. 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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