Skip to main content
Main

Spinach a LA Creme

Spinach à la Crème is a creamy spinach dish served with sliced hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick over and wash the spinach, then cut the leaves from the stalks.

  2. Boil the spinach in salted water for about 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the spinach, chop it very fine, and rub it through a colander.

Make the creamed spinach

  1. Put the spinach into a saucepan and stir until it begins to smoke.

  2. Add the butter, sugar, milk, salt, and pepper, and beat with a fork as it heats.

  3. Cook until it begins to bubble while you beat it.

Serve

  1. Pour into a deep dish and surround with sliced hard-boiled eggs before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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; chopping and sieving make it smooth and fine-textured.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the spinach a silky mouthfeel.
Milk
Adds moisture that loosens the spinach into a creamy, spoonable texture.
White sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the bitterness of the spinach.
Hard-boiled eggs
Provide a mild, rich contrast in flavor and texture as a garnish.

The step that matters

Beating while the spinach heats. Stirring as the purée warms keeps it smooth and evenly heated. If it is left unattended it can scorch on the base of the pan and turn grainy or stick, so keep it moving until it bubbles.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, butter, sugar, milk, pepper, egg):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits less well
  4. Cardamomfits less well

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

You might also like

Spinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesCreamed Spinach SoupCreamed Spinach Soup19 recipesSpinach and EggsSpinach and Eggs8 recipes