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Minced Spinach

A sautéed spinach dish topped with slices of cold boiled egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Minced Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach thoroughly.

  2. Boil salted water with baking soda. Add spinach and cook until tender, then drain in a colander.

  3. Chop the spinach finely.

Make the creamed spinach

  1. In a frying pan, melt butter and stir in flour until smooth but not browned.

  2. Add the chopped spinach and stir in milk. Heat thoroughly, then remove from heat.

Serve

  1. Arrange the spinach in a mound on a hot dish and top with slices of cold 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 bulk of the dish and provides its green color and earthy flavor.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, carrying flavor through the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth, spoonable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and creaminess.
Boiled egg
Adds protein, soft texture and mild richness as a topping.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter without browning. Cooking the flour in fat until smooth and pale lets it thicken the milk evenly. Browning gives a nutty, darker flavor and weakens thickening, and stirring lumps in unevenly makes a grainy sauce.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

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