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Spinach Au Jus

Spinach cooked in a mixture of boiling water, gravy, butter, pepper, salt, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Au Jus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Select young and tender spinach, or pick over and tear off only the tender parts.

  2. Place spinach in a saucepan with 1 cup boiling water and simmer for 10 minutes without covering.

  3. Drain spinach thoroughly in a colander, pressing out all moisture.

  4. Chop spinach finely and optionally rub it through a colander to make a purée.

Season and serve

  1. Add gravy or meat juice, butter, pepper, salt, and sugar to the spinach.

  2. Heat the mixture in a saucepan until thoroughly hot and serve immediately.

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. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Spinach + meattop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together263 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Meat + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,777 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the body of the dish, and its fine chopping or puréeing gives it a smooth, uniform texture.
Rich gravy or meat juice
Adds savoury depth and moisture, so the spinach reads as a sauced dish rather than plain greens.
Butter
Adds fat for a silky mouthfeel and carries flavour through the spinach.
Sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness that balances the bitterness of cooked spinach.

The step that matters

Draining and pressing the spinach. Spinach holds a lot of water. If moisture is not pressed out before seasoning, the dish turns watery and dilutes the gravy and butter, so the flavour and texture suffer.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, butter, pepper, sugar. 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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