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Dessert

Spinach Cream

A custard dessert made with egg yolks, sugar, cinnamon, cream, milk, spinach juice, served over biscuits or orange slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Spinach Cream

Why it works: Spinach and biscuit share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 58 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Spinach Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs with a wooden spoon or whisk.

  2. Add sugar and a stick of cinnamon, then mix in the cream and milk.

  3. Stir in the spinach juice and set over a gentle heat.

  4. Stir constantly until thickened like hasty pudding.

Set and serve

  1. Place Naples biscuits or orange slices in a custard dish and pour the mixture over them.

  2. Chill and serve cold as a dessert or second course.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + biscuittop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together58 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Cinnamon + biscuittop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together312 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Cinnamon + spinachtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together179 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat and add richness.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, soft texture.
Milk
Provides liquid that, with the yolks, sets into a smooth custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the savoury spinach juice.
Spinach juice
Supplies the green colour and a mild vegetable flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until thickened like hasty pudding. Egg yolks set when gently heated, but if the heat is too high or stirring stops, they can curdle or scramble. Constant stirring over gentle heat keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, cinnamon, cream, milk, biscuit):

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Spinachthe original
  4. Beetrootfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cinnamon, cream, milk, biscuit. 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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