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Spinach with a Twist

"This is a quick and easy side dish I made up to complement any fish or chicken dish with spinach, diced tomatoes, and that rich Roquefort cheese (any blue cheese will work)."

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 3,400 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

4 servings
Prep15 min
Cook15 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the sliced yellow onion and cook, stirring often, until soft and lightly golden, about 6 minutes.

  3. Add the drained diced tomatoes and cook for 3 minutes, stirring, until most of the liquid has evaporated.

  4. Stir in the thawed, well-drained chopped spinach and cook for 3 minutes until heated through.

  5. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  6. Crumble the Roquefort cheese over the spinach mixture, stir gently until it begins to melt, then serve warm.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Spinach + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Olive + tomatotop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together17,913 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Tomato + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,350 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Olive + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,700 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (olive, tomato, spinach, pepper, roquefort cheese):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Lettucebetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against olive, tomato, spinach, pepper, roquefort cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).