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Spinach, with Gravy

Spinach cooked in a butter‑flour gravy, garnished with toasted bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spinach, with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick leaves from the stalks of the spinach.

  2. Wash the leaves well in several waters.

  3. Drain the spinach.

  4. Boil the spinach in salted water for 5 minutes.

  5. Press the spinach.

  6. Soak the spinach in cold water for 30 minutes to preserve the color.

  7. Remove the spinach from the water.

  8. Form the spinach into small balls to press out moisture.

  9. Chop the spinach finely.

Make the gravy

  1. Mix 1 ounce of butter with 1 ounce of flour.

  2. Stir the mixture over heat for 3 minutes.

  3. Add a pinch of salt and the chopped spinach.

  4. Stir for 5 minutes.

  5. Pour in ¼ pint of stock.

  6. Blend the stock with the spinach.

  7. Gradually add ½ pint more stock.

  8. Stir for another 5 minutes.

  9. Remove from heat.

  10. Stir in 1 ounce of fresh butter until dissolved.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

  2. Garnish with triangular pieces of toasted bread crumbs.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 bulk of the dish and supplies its green flavor and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the finished gravy.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a gravy as its starch absorbs liquid when heated.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the gravy and carries savory flavor through the spinach.

The step that matters

Adding the stock gradually. Flour mixed with butter must be cooked and blended with the liquid slowly, otherwise the starch clumps into lumps instead of forming a smooth gravy.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, 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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