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Spinach Pudding

Spinach pudding is a steamed custard made with spinach, cream, butter, nutmeg, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach until tender, then press and pass it through a wire sieve.

Make the pudding

  1. In a stewpan, combine the spinach with double cream and butter over medium heat.

  2. Season with nutmeg to taste, then remove from heat.

  3. Stir in the egg yolks until well combined.

  4. Pour the mixture into a mold and steam until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with half glaze as a second course or as a garnish for vegetable pudding.

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. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh spinach
Forms the green base of the pudding and gives its main body and flavour.
Double cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the pudding.
Fresh butter
Contributes fat for a silky mouthfeel and rich flavour.
Large egg yolks
Set when gently heated, giving the pudding its firm yet tender structure.

The step that matters

Steaming until set. Egg yolks thicken and set at moderate heat. Overheating or steaming too hard can curdle or toughen the custard, leaving a grainy, watery texture instead of a smooth set.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, butter, nutmeg, egg):

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, nutmeg, egg. 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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