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Puree of Spinach

A spinach puree made with white sauce, nutmeg, salt, sugar, butter, and glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Puree of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick, wash, and boil the spinach.

  2. Refresh the spinach in cold water and squeeze out all excess water.

  3. Pound the spinach in a mortar.

Make the puree

  1. Combine the spinach with white sauce, nutmeg, salt, and sugar in a saucepan.

  2. Reduce the puree over medium heat to preserve its color.

  3. Pass the mixture through a colander.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, warm the puree in a stewpan and add the butter and glaze.

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. Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 main body of the puree and supplies its green color and flavor.
White sauce
Adds creaminess and moisture, giving the puree a smooth, binding texture.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the finished puree.
Glaze
Adds gloss and a glazed sheen to the finished puree.

The step that matters

Reduce the puree over medium heat to preserve its color. Spinach turns dull olive when overheated because its chlorophyll breaks down under prolonged high heat. Gentle, moderate heat and a short reduction help keep the puree bright green.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, nutmeg, sugar, 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.

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