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Spinach on Toast

A spinach mixture served on toasted bread, garnished with boiled egg whites, yolks, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Spinach on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Thoroughly wash the spinach in several waters to remove all sand and dirt.

  2. Boil the spinach until perfectly tender, then drain off all the water.

  3. Dissolve the nut butter in a little cool water and add it to the spinach along with the beaten egg and salt. Mix thoroughly, chopping the spinach with a knife, and press it into a round shape in a basin.

Prepare the toast

  1. Cut the bread into slices and arrange them on a plate, optionally cutting them diagonally for a fancy presentation.

  2. Warm the plate in the oven before serving.

Assemble and garnish

  1. Turn the spinach mixture out onto the toast, ensuring it does not cover the points of the toast.

  2. Garnish with chopped boiled egg whites on top, chopped yolks in the center, and sections of lemon.

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 + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 topping, giving the dish its body and green flavour.
Egg
Binds the chopped spinach together so it holds its round shape on the toast.
Nut butter
Adds richness and fat, softening the texture of the spinach mixture.

The step that matters

Pressing the spinach into a round. Chopped spinach mixed with beaten egg must be packed firmly so it holds together when turned out. Loose mixture will spread and collapse on the toast.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread, lemon. 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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