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Spinach a LA Reine

Spinach à la Reine is a French spinach dish cooked with butter, cream, sugar, nutmeg, and pepper, served in molded portions topped with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach in salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the spinach thoroughly and chop it finely.

  3. Return the chopped spinach to the saucepan and add sugar, butter, cream, nutmeg, and pepper.

  4. Stir constantly until the mixture is almost dry.

Mold and serve

  1. Dip an egg cup in boiling water, fill it with the spinach mixture, press hard, and turn it out onto a hot dish.

  2. Repeat until all the spinach is molded.

  3. Top each serving with a slice of bread.

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 flavour and body.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the purée hold together when molded.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the slight bitterness of cooked spinach.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until the mixture is almost dry.. Driving off excess water lets the spinach hold its shape when pressed into the mold. If it stays wet, the molds will be loose and may weep on the plate.

Swap the spinach

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