Name: Spinach Pudding
Ingredients: forcemeat; 3 egg yolks; a little salt; a little pepper; potatoes (for garnish); turnips (for garnish); carrots (for garnish); sauce espagnole

Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Cool the forcemeat, then add the egg yolks, salt, and pepper.
Put the mixture into a high mold and cook in a bain marie for about 1 hour.
Turn the pudding out onto a dish.
Garnish the base with previously cooked and glazed potatoes, turnips, and carrots shaped like pears.
Serve with sauce espagnole.

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.

Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,002 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Potato + carrottop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,107 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).
Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,555 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Potato + turniptop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together562 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, turnip, carrot, sauce):

Parsnipfits better
Leekfits better
Spinachfits better
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, turnip, carrot, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.