Name: Spinach
Ingredients: fresh spinach; salt; butter; pepper; hard-boiled eggs

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

Ingredients

Directions

Wash the spinach thoroughly.
Put it into just enough salted boiling water to cover it.
Cook until tender, then squeeze out all the water and press it through a colander.
Sauté the spinach for a few minutes with butter, pepper, and salt.
Serve with sliced hard-boiled eggs on top, or as a garnish for lamb with lemon juice and stock.
For a presentation, arrange on a platter with buttered toast slices around the dish, placing a cupful of spinach on each slice and pressing half a hard-boiled egg into the top.

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.

Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,400 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,323 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,583 recipes

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