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Spinach, Plain

A simple spinach dish cooked with flour, butter, broth, and stale bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Spinach, Plain

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Clean the spinach, then cut it into pieces and wash it well.

  2. Boil the spinach for 10 minutes.

  3. Cool the spinach in cold water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, fry the flour in the butter for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the spinach to the pan.

  3. Add half of the broth to the pan and boil the mixture for 5 to 8 minutes.

  4. Pour in the remaining broth and stir slowly.

  5. Boil for another 10 minutes.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. Cut stale bread into squares and fry the bread squares in butter.

  2. Arrange the fried bread over the spinach.

  3. Serve hot with a little melted butter poured over it.

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 + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the dish and gives it its body and green flavour.
Flour
Fried in butter, it thickens the broth into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Carries the flour for frying and adds richness to the sauce and bread.
Broth
Liquid that loosens the spinach and flour into a sauce with savoury flavour.
Stale bread
Fried in butter, it adds crisp texture and contrast to the soft spinach.

The step that matters

Frying the flour in the butter. Flour must be cooked in fat long enough to lose its raw taste and to thicken evenly. If it is added to liquid unevenly or stays raw, the sauce will be lumpy or taste floury.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, bread, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, bread, pepper. 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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