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Spinach, with Cream

A creamy spinach dish made by boiling spinach, then simmering it in butter, flour, sugar, salt, nutmeg, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach in several waters.

  2. In a large pot, bring 4 quarts of water to a boil and add ½ ounce of coarse sea salt.

  3. Boil the spinach for 10 minutes, then transfer it to cold water briefly.

  4. Press the water from the spinach and chop it finely.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt 4 ounces of butter over medium heat.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of flour, ½ teaspoon of sugar, salt, nutmeg, and ½ pint of cream.

  3. Stir until the mixture boils, then add the chopped spinach.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with pieces of bread fried in butter.

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. 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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 color and earthy flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a smooth, spoonable sauce.
Cream
Gives the sauce its body, richness and creamy texture.

The step that matters

Press the water from the spinach. Spinach holds a lot of water after boiling. If it is not pressed dry, the extra liquid thins the cream sauce and makes the dish watery.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, nutmeg, 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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