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Spinach Cooked in Butter

A simple spinach dish cooked in butter, seasoned with salt and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach Cooked in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach leaves thoroughly to remove any sand.

  2. Cook the spinach in salted water until tender, then drain and press out the moisture.

  3. Chop the spinach finely.

Cook in butter

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan, add the chopped spinach, and stir with a wooden spoon.

  2. Add a little more butter to help remove moisture.

  3. Season with salt and a pinch of nutmeg.

  4. Finish by adding 1½ ounces of butter and stir until melted.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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 leaves
Forms the bulk of the dish; cooking wilts it and it releases moisture that must be removed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the spinach a smooth, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Pressing out the moisture. Spinach holds a lot of water. If it is not pressed dry after cooking, the extra liquid dilutes the butter and makes the spinach soggy rather than silky, so the butter cannot coat it properly.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg. 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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