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Herb Puddings

A savory pudding made from boiled and mashed herbs mixed with 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 the parsley leaves from the stems and wash all the herbs.

  2. Boil the herbs together for 3 minutes, then drain the water.

  3. Mash the herbs very fine and mix well with salt and pepper.

Make the batter and bake

  1. In a separate bowl, prepare a batter with the flour, cream, and eggs.

  2. Stir the batter into the mashed herbs and pour into a dish.

  3. Cover the dish with a good crust and bake.

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
Bind the batter and help set the pudding as it cooks.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the pudding holds its shape.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the pudding a soft, smooth texture.
Parsley leaves
Provide the main herb flavour and green colour.

The step that matters

Mash the herbs very fine. Finely mashed herbs blend evenly into the batter, giving a smooth texture; coarse pieces leave a stringy, uneven pudding.

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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