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Spinach on Toast

Spinach cooked in salted water served on buttered toasted bread with a milk, butter, pepper, and salt sauce thickened with flour.

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 on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach and tie it in bunches.

  2. Cook the spinach in salted water until done, then drain it.

Assemble on toast

  1. Cut the strings and lay the spinach on buttered toasted slices of bread.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, butter, pepper, and salt.

  2. Thicken the mixture with flour made smooth in cold milk, then pour over the spinach on toast.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (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, with a tender, wilted texture once cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the toast carry flavour and resist sogginess.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it creaminess once thickened.
Flour
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth sauce as it is heated.
Bread
Provides a crisp, sturdy base that holds the spinach and sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be mixed smooth in cold milk before it goes into the hot mixture; otherwise it clumps. Starch granules swell and thicken the liquid only when heated evenly, so the sauce should be stirred while it cooks.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, milk, flour, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, milk, flour, pepper. 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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