Skip to main content
Main

Minced Spinach

A sautéed spinach dish finished with cream or milk and garnished with hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Minced Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach in salted water until tender, about 1 to 2 hours.

  2. Drain the spinach in a colander and chop finely.

  3. Season the chopped spinach with pepper and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until smooth but not browned.

  2. Add the chopped spinach and stir for 5 minutes.

  3. Pour in the cream or milk and stir for an additional 3 minutes.

  4. Garnish with slices of hard boiled eggs and serve hot.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 color.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the dish.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth, binding base.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and creaminess, loosening the spinach into a smooth mixture.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter. Cooking the flour in butter without browning it creates a roux that thickens smoothly. If it browns, the flavor turns nutty and the thickening power weakens, and lumps form if it is not stirred constantly.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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

You might also like

Spinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesCreamed Spinach SoupCreamed Spinach Soup19 recipesSpinach and EggsSpinach and Eggs8 recipes