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Eggs and Spinach

A dish of boiled spinach seasoned with butter, gravy, salt, pepper, nutmeg, topped with poached eggs.

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 ↓

Eggs and Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach thoroughly.

  2. Boil the spinach until tender.

  3. Transfer the boiled spinach to cold water to maintain its color.

  4. Press out the water from the spinach using a towel.

  5. Chop the spinach finely.

Cook the spinach

  1. Place the chopped spinach in a saucepan with butter and gravy.

  2. Boil the mixture quickly, adding salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Alternatively, stew the spinach with cream and a little sugar for a delicate flavor.

Poach and serve

  1. Poach the eggs.

  2. Trim the poached eggs neatly.

  3. Serve the poached eggs on top of the spinach.

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. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the green bed that the eggs rest on and carries the flavour of the dish.
Eggs
Provide the main protein; their whites set when poached, giving a tender, firm topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the spinach.
Rich gravy
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the spinach as it boils.

The step that matters

Transfer the boiled spinach to cold water. Chilling right after boiling stops the cooking and helps the spinach keep its bright green colour. Without it, residual heat keeps cooking the leaves and they turn dull.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, egg. 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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