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Spinach a LA Parisienne

Spinach à la Parisienne is a sautéed spinach dish flavored with butter, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, and cream.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Remove the leaves from the stalks of the spinach.

  2. Boil the spinach in water with a little salt for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the spinach well and dry it, then chop finely.

Make the creamed spinach

  1. Return the chopped spinach to the heat with butter, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, and salt, and stir for 2 minutes.

  2. Beat in the cream or milk until smooth, like custard.

  3. Bring to a gentle boil, then serve.

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 leaves
Forms the main body of the dish and gives its green flavour and fibrous texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream or rich milk
Adds moisture and fat, and thickens into a smooth, custard-like texture when beaten in.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the bitterness of the spinach.

The step that matters

Beat in the cream or milk until smooth. Adding dairy to hot spinach can cause it to curdle or turn grainy if it is added too fast or boiled hard. Beating it in gradually over gentle heat keeps the mixture smooth and custard-like.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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