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Spinach on Toast

A warm spinach mixture served over buttered crustless toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Cook the spinach in boiling salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain and chop the spinach finely.

Make the spinach mixture

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and add the sugar, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stir in the chopped spinach and heat while beating smooth.

  3. At the end, add the cream or milk.

Serve on toast

  1. Pour the spinach mixture over buttered crustless toast on a flat dish.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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 gives its green colour and earthy flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth texture.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture and softens the mixture into a smoother, creamier texture.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the bitterness of the spinach.

The step that matters

Beating the spinach smooth while it heats. Chopped spinach holds water and can turn stringy or watery if not heated and beaten well. Heating drives off excess moisture and beating breaks the leaves down, giving a smooth, thick mixture that holds on the toast.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, cream, bread. 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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