Skip to main content
Main

Spinach Salad

A chilled spinach salad served on slices of cold boiled tongue, garnished with parsley and accompanied by tartare sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Spinach Salad

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Spinach Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick over, wash, and cook the spinach until tender.

  2. Drain and chop the spinach finely.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, then add melted butter.

Mold and set

  1. Butter small tin molds and pack the spinach mixture solidly into them.

  2. Chill the molds until set, then remove the spinach from the molds.

Serve

  1. Arrange the spinach on circular slices of cold boiled tongue.

  2. Garnish each serving with a wreath of parsley and serve with sauce tartare.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,025 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

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 salad and, once packed and chilled, holds the molded shape.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the chopped spinach.
Cold boiled tongue
Provides the meaty base and savory flavor the spinach is arranged on.

The step that matters

Packing the molds solidly. Spinach must be packed firmly and chilled until set so that it holds its shape when turned out. Loose packing leaves air gaps and a crumbly molded shape that falls apart on removal.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, butter, parsley, sauce):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, butter, parsley, sauce. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSpinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesCreamed Spinach SoupCreamed Spinach Soup19 recipes