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Spinach Francaise

Chopped boiled spinach cooked in a butter, flour, sugar and milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Spinach Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Clean and wash the spinach thoroughly.

  2. Cook the spinach in salted boiling water for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the spinach.

  4. Cool the spinach, then chop it finely.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the flour, sugar, and salt. Cook for 15 minutes while stirring.

  3. Gradually add the milk.

  4. Serve hot.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 provides its green color and vegetable flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the flour.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that balances the bitterness of the spinach.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk. Adding milk slowly while stirring lets the flour disperse evenly, preventing lumps. Smooth, well-thickened sauce depends on this.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, milk):

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, milk. 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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