Name: Green Color of Spinach
Ingredients: 5 large handfuls of spinach; 6 cups cold water; a little parsley; a little chives; cold white broth

Why it works: Spinach and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Green Color of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Pick, wash, and drain the spinach.
Pound the spinach finely in a mortar and add 6 cups of cold water.
Strain the mixture through a towel, pressing to extract moisture.
Heat the strained spinach in a saucepan until just before boiling, then remove from heat.
Drain the spinach in a fine sieve; the residue will be used for coloring.
Alternatively, boil 3 handfuls of spinach with parsley and chives for 1 minute.
Immerse in cold water, drain, and press dry.
Pound finely in a mortar and rub through a fine sieve.
Moisten with a little cold white broth.

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.

Spinach + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together163 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,150 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Spinach + parsleytop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,025 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).