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Spinach Green

A sweetened spinach puree thickened into a batter by heating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,033 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Spinach Green

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pound a quantity of spinach in a mortar.

  2. Place the pulp in a muslin bag and squeeze out the juice.

  3. Add ¼ of the weight of the juice in sugar.

  4. Heat the mixture until it reduces by half and thickens into a batter.

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 + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the green colour and the vegetal flavour, with its juice forming the base of the sauce.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, as it dissolves and concentrates on heating, helps the mixture thicken into a batter.

The step that matters

Heating until the mixture reduces by half. Cooking drives off water so the juice concentrates and thickens. Heating too little leaves a thin sauce, while overheating can scorch the sugar and dull the green colour.

“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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