Skip to main content
Main

Soubrics of Spinach

A spinach dish cooked with Parmesan, eggs, and spices, then sautéed in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Soubrics of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash, boil, and drain the spinach, then chop it.

Make the custard

  1. Add the Parmesan cheese, egg yolks, salt, cayenne, and nutmeg. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the unbeaten egg white.

Shape and serve

  1. Measure by rounded tablespoons and sauté in butter.

  2. Arrange on a hot serving dish and 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 + 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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Spinach + parmesan cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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 provides its green flavour and moisture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and bind it together.
Egg white
Adds structure and lift when stirred in off the heat, helping the mixture hold its shape.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and some body to the custard.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard over heat. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but if they get too hot they can scramble into curds. Stirring constantly keeps heat even so the custard stays smooth and thick.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, parmesan cheese, egg, pepper, butter. 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.

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesSpinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipes