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Spinach Salad

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Spinach Salad

Why it works: Spinach and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 355 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Spinach Salad

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Press all the water from the boiled spinach and mince it finely.

  2. Toss the minced spinach with French dressing and let it season for 1 hour.

  3. Serve with cream dressing.

  4. Garnish with strips of hard boiled eggs and lengthwise strips of cucumber.

  5. Rub the yolks of the eggs through a strainer and place in a mound in the center.

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. Spinach + cucumbertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together355 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

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

  4. Egg + cucumbertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, cream, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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