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Dessert

Spinach Cream

A custard made with egg yolks, sugar, cinnamon, heavy cream, milk, spinach juice, served chilled 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 egg yolks with a whisk until smooth.

  2. Add sugar and a stick of cinnamon.

  3. Stir in the heavy cream and whole milk.

  4. Mix in the spinach juice and stir well.

  5. Cook over low heat, stirring constantly until thickened like hasty pudding.

Assemble and chill

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

  2. Chill before serving as a cold dish for supper or a 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 during gentle cooking, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Heavy cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the custard a smooth, velvety texture.
Whole milk
Adds liquid and mild sweetness, keeping the custard soft and pourable before it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavour of the spinach juice.
Spinach juice
Provides the green colour and the mild vegetal flavour of the custard.

The step that matters

Cook over low heat, stirring constantly. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the heat is too high or stirring stops, they can scramble and curdle, leaving the custard grainy instead of smooth.

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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