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Chicory Ob Spinach

A sautéed chicory and spinach dish finished with butter, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Chicory and spinach share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Chicory Ob Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chicory and spinach

  1. Wash and soak the chicory in cold water for about 1 hour.

  2. Bring a pot of water to a boil, add salt, and boil the chicory for 1.5 hours.

  3. Boil the spinach for 20 minutes.

  4. Drain the chicory in a colander and rinse it under cold running water.

Make the creamed chicory

  1. Place the chicory in a saucepan over medium heat to dry off the water completely.

  2. Add butter, black pepper, and salt to the chicory. Mix the chicory well.

  3. In a small bowl, mix the cream with flour. Add the cream and flour mixture to the chicory.

  4. Cook the mixture for 1 hour if possible.

Serve

  1. If there are leftovers, warm them up.

  2. Serve with fried eggs on top for lunch.

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. Chicory + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Chicory + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Chicory
Its bitterness is softened by long boiling, leaving a mild, tender vegetable base.
Spinach
Adds green leafy body and moisture to the creamed mixture.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, thick texture once combined with flour.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it coats the chicory rather than running off.
Butter
Adds fat for flavour and a silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Drying the chicory before adding cream. Any water left on the chicory dilutes the cream and flour, so the sauce turns thin and may not thicken properly. Drying it over heat keeps the sauce cohesive.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Spinachthe original
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Lettucefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against chicory, butter, pepper, cream, flour. 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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