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Spinach and Toast

A sautéed spinach dish flavored with salt, pepper, and butter, served hot and garnished with fried slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 and Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick away the stalks from the spinach and wash the leaves in several waters.

  2. Lift the leaves out by hand to leave sand or grit at the bottom, then drain on a sieve.

Cook and season

  1. Place the spinach in a saucepan with a good sprinkling of salt and the water clinging to the leaves.

  2. Boil until tender, about 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Drain the spinach, press it well, and chop it small.

  4. In a clean saucepan, combine the chopped spinach with a little pepper, salt, and a slice of butter.

  5. Stir well for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with fried slices.

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. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh spinach
Forms the bulk of the dish; it wilts and collapses as it cooks down.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the chopped leaves and carrying flavour.

The step that matters

Pressing the spinach after boiling. Spinach holds a large amount of water. Pressing it well removes that excess before sautéing, so the dish stays concentrated and does not turn soggy or watery.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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