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Herb Puddings

A savory pudding made from boiled and mashed mixed herbs, flour, cream, and eggs, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 combine with spinach, lettuce hearts, mustard greens, cress, white beet leaves, and chives.

  2. Wash the herbs and boil them together for 3 minutes.

  3. Drain the water and mash the herbs very fine.

  4. Mix in salt and pepper to taste.

Make the batter

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

  2. Stir the batter into the mashed herbs.

Bake

  1. Cover the mixture 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 mixture and help it set into a firm, sliceable pudding when baked.
Flour
Thickens the batter so it holds the mashed herbs together rather than running apart.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the pudding a soft, smooth texture.
Parsley leaves
Provides the main fresh herb flavour and green colour of the pudding.

The step that matters

Mash the herbs very fine. Finely mashed herbs give an even, smooth texture. Coarse pieces stay separate and can make the set pudding crumbly and uneven.

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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