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Spinach a LA Creme

Creamed spinach made with butter, flour, cream, and spinach, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 a LA Creme

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the creamed spinach

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour until smooth and frothy.

  2. Add the boiled, chopped spinach and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Stir in the cream, salt, and pepper, and cook for an additional 3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the spinach mixture plain on toast.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that gives the sauce its body and richness.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smooth sauce that clings to the spinach.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the sauce a silky, smooth texture.
Spinach
Provides the main vegetable bulk and flavour; boiling and chopping prepares it to blend into the sauce.

The step that matters

Whisking the flour into the melted butter. Whisking constantly while the flour cooks in the butter prevents lumps and lets the starch cook out its raw taste before the cream is added. Stopping to let it sit can leave clumps that are hard to smooth out later.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Spinachthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, flour, pepper. 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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