Skip to main content
Main

Herb Puddings

A savory pudding made from boiled and mashed mixed herbs mixed with a flour, cream, and egg batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

  2. Combine the parsley leaves with spinach, lettuce, mustard and cress, white beet, and chives.

  3. Wash the herbs.

  4. Boil the herbs together for 3 minutes. Drain the water.

  5. Mash the herbs very fine.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the mashed herbs with salt and pepper.

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

  3. Stir the batter into the mashed herbs.

  4. Pour the mixture into a dish.

  5. Cover the dish with a good crust.

  6. Bake until set.

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 the pudding set as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the cream batter so it holds the herbs together.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness to the batter, softening the texture.
Parsley leaves
Provides the main green flavour and bulk of the pudding.

The step that matters

Bake until set. Eggs set as their proteins coagulate with heat. Pulling the dish too early leaves a runny centre, while overbaking makes it dry and rubbery.

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.

You might also like

Spinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesCreamed Spinach SoupCreamed Spinach Soup19 recipesCreamy Lettuce SoupCreamy Lettuce Soup8 recipes