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Spinach Ala Reine

Spinach à la Reine is a sautéed spinach dish flavored with butter, pepper, salt, mace, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Spinach Ala Reine

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach well and remove the leaves.

  2. Cook the spinach in salted, boiling water for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain and press out all the water, then chop very fine.

Season and cook

  1. Return the chopped spinach to the saucepan with butter, pepper, salt, mace, and sugar.

  2. Cook until nearly dry.

Shape and serve

  1. Fill egg cups with the mixture.

  2. Turn the cups onto a heated flat dish.

  3. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Butter + macetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, once chopped and dried, gives it a soft, moulded texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the spinach a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Press out all the water, then cook until nearly dry. Spinach holds a large amount of water. If it is not pressed and then cooked down, the mixture stays loose and watery, so it will not hold its shape when turned out of the egg cups.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, pepper, sugar. 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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