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Spinach, with Poached Eggs

Spinach sautéed with butter, sugar, spices, and thick cream, topped with poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach, with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick, wash, and boil the spinach until tender, then drain and press out all the water.

  2. Rub the spinach through a fine sieve and mix in the butter, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and cayenne.

  3. Stir the mixture over medium heat for 10 minutes, then mix in the thick cream and serve immediately.

Poach and serve the eggs

  1. In a small pan, bring water to a boil and add salt and vinegar.

  2. Crack each egg into a separate cup and gently pour them into the boiling water one at a time.

  3. Poach the eggs for 3 minutes, then remove them with a slotted spoon and drain the water.

  4. Place the poached eggs neatly on the spinach.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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 carries the creamy, savoury base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the purée.
Thick cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the spinach a softer, creamier texture.
Eggs
Provide the set, poached centre that sits on top of the spinach.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the earthy spinach.

The step that matters

Pressing out the water from the spinach. Spinach holds a lot of water, and any left behind dilutes the butter and cream, leaving the purée loose and watery rather than thick and smooth.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, cream, egg, vinegar. 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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