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Blue Cheese, Spinach Meat Loaf Muffins

"Moist, flavorful and absolutely one of the best meat loaf recipes yet! Using a large muffin pan allows the mini meat muffins to cook faster and makes portion sizing easier. I like to serve this with sweet potatoes or butternut squash. I think the mini meat loaves taste great the next day as they are easy to put away and re-heat. Try making a meat loaf sandwich out of them too."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Blue cheese and spinach work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and 65 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

6 servings
Prep15 min
Cook30 min

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, soy, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C) and grease a 12-cup muffin tin well, or line it with paper liners.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the ground beef, diced onion, Italian bread crumbs, eggs and Worcestershire sauce, mixing gently with your hands until just combined.

  3. Fold in the chopped fresh spinach and crumbled blue cheese until evenly distributed through the meat mixture.

  4. Divide the mixture evenly among the muffin cups, pressing it in lightly and mounding it slightly on top.

  5. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until the centers reach 160°F (71°C) in the thickest part, as measured with a meat thermometer.

  6. Let the muffins rest in the tin for 5 minutes, then loosen the edges with a knife and serve warm.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Blue cheese + spinachtop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together65 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Beef + blue cheesetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  4. Beef + breadtop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,031 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Bread + eggtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together22,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, blue cheese, bread, spinach, egg, sauce):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Asparagusbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatoabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, blue cheese, bread, spinach, egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).