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Spinach, to Boil

A boiled spinach dish seasoned with salt, butter, and pepper, served hot with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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, to Boil

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick the spinach carefully, removing any stalks or weeds.

  2. Wash the spinach in several waters using two large tubs filled with water.

  3. Transfer the spinach from one tub to the other to leave grit behind.

Boil and finish

  1. Put the cleaned spinach into a large saucepan with 1 pint of water and the salt.

  2. Press the spinach down with a wooden spoon and boil for 10 minutes until tender.

  3. Drain the spinach in a colander, squeeze it dry, and chop it finely.

  4. In a clean saucepan, combine the spinach with butter and pepper, stirring until hot.

  5. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with toasted bread slices.

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 + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

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

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; boiling wilts it and makes it tender enough to eat.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the spinach a smooth, glossy texture and flavour.

The step that matters

Squeeze the spinach dry after draining. Boiled spinach holds a lot of water. Leaving it wet dilutes the butter and seasoning and makes the dish soggy, so squeezing it well before chopping and reheating keeps the texture firm and the flavour concentrated.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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