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Spinach a LA Reine

Spinach à la Reine is a creamy spinach dish garnished with hard‑boiled egg slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach in salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain thoroughly and chop finely.

Cook and mold

  1. Return the spinach to the saucepan with sugar, butter, cream, nutmeg, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stir constantly until almost dry.

  3. Dip an egg cup in boiling water, fill it with spinach, press hard, and turn it out onto a hot dish.

  4. Repeat until all spinach is molded.

Garnish and serve

  1. Top each serving with a slice of hard-boiled egg.

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the main body of the dish, and its moisture must be cooked off so it holds a shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the spinach a smooth, silky texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the chopped spinach bind together into a smooth purée.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that softens the natural bitterness of the spinach.

The step that matters

Stir constantly until almost dry. Spinach is mostly water, and residual moisture makes the mixture loose so it will not hold its molded shape. Constant stirring prevents the cream from scorching on the bottom of the pan while the moisture evaporates.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cream, nutmeg, 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.

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