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To Dress Spinach

A sautéed spinach dish finished with cream and pepper, served with toasted bread pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Dress Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Remove the stalks from the spinach leaves.

  2. Wash the spinach leaves in cold water two or three times.

  3. Drain the spinach in a colander.

  4. Place the spinach in a large saucepan.

  5. Sprinkle the spinach with coarse sea salt.

  6. Boil the spinach without adding water for 10 minutes with the cover off.

  7. Drain the spinach again.

  8. Press out all the water from the spinach.

  9. Chop the spinach finely or rub it through a wire sieve if preferred.

Make the creamed spinach

  1. Melt 1 ounce of butter in a stewpan.

  2. Add the spinach, pepper, salt, and cream to the stewpan.

  3. Mix the mixture well.

  4. Heat the mixture on the stove, stirring until hot.

Fry the bread and serve

  1. Cut the slice of bread into triangular pieces.

  2. Heat 2 ounces of butter in a frying pan until hot.

  3. Fry the bread pieces until they are pale brown.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 dish and, once pressed dry and chopped, gives a smooth, cohesive texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and gives the spinach a silky mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the chopped spinach a creamy, smooth consistency when heated.
Bread
Frying in butter toasts the pieces, adding crisp texture and browning for contrast with the soft spinach.

The step that matters

Press out all the water from the spinach. Spinach holds a lot of water. If it is not pressed dry before adding the cream and butter, the excess water dilutes the sauce and makes the dish watery and loose.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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