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Vegetable Pudding

A boiled vegetable puree mixed with egg whites, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and beans match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 365 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

Vegetable Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil spinach, peas, and broad beans separately.

  2. Rub the boiled vegetables through a sieve.

Make and cook the pudding

  1. Mix the vegetable puree with the egg whites, pepper, and salt.

  2. Fill a basin with the mixture and boil.

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 + beanstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together365 recipes

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

  2. Peas + beanstop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together949 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Spinach + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

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

  5. Beans + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,733 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the main vegetable body and green color once pureed.
Peas
Adds sweetness and smooth body to the puree.
Broad beans
Adds earthy flavor and body to the puree.
Egg whites
Set when heated, giving the pudding its structure and firm texture.

The step that matters

Rub the boiled vegetables through a sieve. Pushing the cooked vegetables through a sieve breaks down fibers and removes skins, producing a smooth puree. Lumps or fibrous strands left in the mixture will make the set pudding grainy.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, beans, egg, pepper):

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Black-eyed peafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, beans, egg, pepper. 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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