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Spinach with Egg Sauce

Spinach with egg sauce is a boiled spinach topped with a sauce made from egg yolk, raw egg, butter, vinegar, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 503 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Spinach with Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Soak the spinach in cold water for several hours, then pick over each leaf and wash thoroughly to remove sand.

  2. Cook the cleaned spinach in 1 quart of boiling water with 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt for 20 minutes.

  3. Remove the spinach and place it in a mound on a serving dish.

Make the egg sauce

  1. In a bowl, mash the yolk of the hard-boiled egg with 1 tablespoon of melted butter, adding a pinch of salt, cayenne, and mustard.

  2. In another bowl, beat the raw egg with 1 tablespoon of melted butter or olive oil, then mix in 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar and 2 tablespoons of milk.

  3. Cook this mixture over a kettle until slightly thickened, then stir in the finely chopped egg white.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce over the spinach.

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 + mustardtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together503 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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

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

  5. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 carries the sauce as the main vegetable.
Raw egg
Thickens the sauce as its proteins set with gentle heat.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the sauce.
Cider vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor of the rich sauce.
Milk
Thins the sauce and adds mild sweetness and creaminess.
Butter
Adds fat that gives the sauce a rich, smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cook the egg sauce gently until slightly thickened. Raw egg proteins set with heat, so gentle cooking thickens the sauce smoothly. Too much heat scrambles the egg into curds, which cannot be reversed.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, pepper, mustard, cider, vinegar, milk):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, pepper, mustard, cider, vinegar, milk. 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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