Name: Spinach in Croustades
Ingredients: stale bread, 2 inches thick; spinach, chopped; cream or butter; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Bread and spinach work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Spinach in Croustades

Ingredients

stale bread, 2 inches thick
spinach, chopped
cream or butter
coarse sea salt

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cut the crusts off the stale bread and scoop out the center without breaking the bottom.
Brown all sides of the bread in the oven at 400°F (200°C) or over coals.
Mix the chopped spinach with cream or butter and season with coarse sea salt.
Pile the spinach mixture into the croustade.

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.

Bread + spinachtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,130 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Bread + creamtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,789 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).