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Spinach with Ceeam

Creamed spinach sautéed with butter, pepper, and cream, served with fried croutons.

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 with Ceeam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick and wash the spinach.

  2. Boil water in a large saucepan and add a little salt.

  3. Cook the spinach in boiling water for 12 minutes.

  4. Transfer the spinach to cold water and squeeze out all the water using a sieve.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the spinach with butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook slowly for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  3. Add the cream and mix well.

  4. Serve the spinach in the center of a dish, surrounded by fried croutons.

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

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

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

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

  4. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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, once cooked and drained, the creamy base.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the spinach a smooth, silky texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping bind the spinach into a creamy mixture.

The step that matters

Squeezing out the water after cooking. Spinach holds a lot of water. If it is not squeezed well, the excess liquid dilutes the butter and cream, leaving the dish watery instead of thick and creamy.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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