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Spinach in a Crown of Eggs

A spinach dish topped with hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and asparagus match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 274 recipes. Both carry 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol, which smells clove, smoky. The science ↓

Spinach in a Crown of Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Cook the spinach in boiling salted water until tender, then chop finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour without browning.

  2. Add a grating of nutmeg and the chopped spinach, mixing well.

  3. Pour in the hot stock or water and blend until combined.

Serve

  1. Form the mixture into a mound on a serving plate and garnish with hard-boiled eggs.

  2. Cut the egg whites to level them and chop finely to place on top of the mound.

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 + asparagustop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  2. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + asparagustop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 gives it its green colour and savoury flavour.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and with the flour forms the base of the thickened sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and spinach mixture into a cohesive, spoonable mound.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a mild, rich flavour and contrasting white and yolk colour as a garnish.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour without browning. Cooking the flour in butter just until it loses its raw taste lets it thicken properly; browning changes its flavour and weakens its thickening power.

Swap the asparagus

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, flour, 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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