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Spinach with Eggs

Spinach with eggs is a sautéed spinach dish mixed with butter, sugar, and egg yolks, topped with sliced egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

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

  2. Cook the spinach in boiling salted water for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain and chop the spinach finely.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the spinach to the heat with the butter and sugar.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, stirring constantly.

  3. Beat in the yolks of the hard-boiled eggs until well mixed.

  4. Transfer the spinach to a deep dish and garnish with sliced egg whites on top.

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. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 provides its main body and green flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the spinach a smooth, silky texture.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the bitterness of cooked spinach.
Hard-boiled eggs
Egg yolks are beaten in to enrich and thicken the spinach; whites serve as garnish.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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