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Spinach with Cream

Spinach with cream is a sautéed spinach dish cooked with butter, flour, milk, cream, salt, pepper, and topped with grated hard boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Spinach with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Cook the spinach in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Drain, squeeze out excess water, and chop finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a hot saucepan, rub in the melted butter with the flour.

  2. Add the milk and cream, salt, and pepper; stir well.

  3. Add the chopped spinach and cook for five minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a hot covered dish, sprinkled with grated hard boiled egg.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 main body of the dish and provides its green color and earthy flavor.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and smooth mouthfeel.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and creaminess.
Cream
Adds fat that makes the sauce richer and silkier.
Hard boiled egg
Adds a soft, mild texture and richness as a garnish.

The step that matters

Rub the butter and flour together, then add the milk and cream gradually. Flour must be cooked in fat to avoid raw starch taste and lumps. Adding liquid while stirring keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cream, 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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