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Spinach Pudding

A savory pudding made with spinach, butter, stock, béchamel, forcemeat, egg yolks, and seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

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.

  2. Drain the spinach and allow it to cool.

  3. Chop the spinach and place it in an enamelled saucepan with butter, stock, and béchamel sauce.

  4. Simmer the mixture for about 5 minutes.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. After cooling, mix in the forcemeat, egg yolks, pepper, and salt until well combined.

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

Serve

  1. 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

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the pudding and gives it its green colour and flavour.
Forcemeat
Adds body and savoury richness, helping the pudding hold its shape when cooked.
Egg yolks
Set during cooking to bind the mixture into a firm, sliceable pudding.
Béchamel sauce
Adds creaminess and moisture, so the spinach stays smooth and not dry.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and a silky texture.

The step that matters

Let the spinach cool before mixing in the eggs. If the mixture is still hot, the egg yolks can scramble or curdle instead of blending smoothly, and the pudding may set unevenly with a grainy texture.

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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