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Salad

A Spring Salad

A salad of cooked spinach, boiled eggs, lettuce, and a seasoned butter‑lemon dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 427 recipes. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

A Spring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick over, trim, wash, and cook the spinach in a double boiler until tender.

  2. Drain the spinach and chop it very fine.

  3. Season the spinach with salt, paprika, nutmeg, lemon juice, and melted butter.

Assemble the cups

  1. Butter the cups.

  2. Line the cups with spinach, leaving a small hole in the center.

  3. Fill the hole with chopped, well-seasoned cold boiled eggs.

  4. Pack the mixture firmly.

Chill and serve

  1. Place on ice.

  2. Chill until very cold.

  3. Turn out onto crisp lettuce.

  4. Serve with salad dressing.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  2. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Nutmeg + lettucetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together184 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the green base of the cups and holds its shape when packed and chilled.
Cold boiled eggs
Provide the firm, rich filling that sits in the center of the spinach.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the chopped spinach.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the spinach and eggs.

The step that matters

Pack the mixture firmly. Firm packing removes air pockets so the spinach and egg hold their shape when turned out. Chilling thoroughly afterward firms the butter and sets the mould, so loose packing can crumble on the plate.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, nutmeg, lemon, butter, 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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