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Spinach, Piemontaise

A sautéed spinach dish flavored with anchovy paste and light Espagnole sauce, served with poached eggs or toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,435 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach, Piemontaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and cook the spinach as in the previous recipe, then chop it finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the finely chopped garlic and sauté briefly.

  2. Stir in the chopped spinach and anchovy paste, mixing well.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, then add the light Espagnole sauce.

Serve

  1. Garnish with poached eggs or toasted bread before serving.

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 + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 provides its leafy, slightly earthy body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the garlic and anchovy flavours through the dish.
Garlic
Adds aroma and pungency that mellows as it cooks briefly in the butter.
Anchovy paste
Contributes a deep, salty, savoury umami note that seasons the spinach.
Light espagnole sauce
Adds body and a savoury brown-sauce backbone that binds the spinach together.

The step that matters

Sauté the garlic briefly. Garlic turns bitter and acrid if it browns too much, so it should be cooked only until fragrant before the spinach goes in.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, butter, garlic, anchovy, sauce, pepper, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, garlic, anchovy, sauce, pepper, 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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