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Spinach with Cream

A sautéed spinach dish flavored with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and cream.

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 ↓

Spinach with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch and mince the spinach.

Make the creamed spinach

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and stir until smooth and frothy.

  3. Stir in the minced spinach, salt, and pepper; cook for 5 minutes.

  4. Add the hot cream or milk and cook for an additional 3 minutes.

  5. Serve.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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, once minced, gives it a soft, cohesive texture.
Butter
Carries the flavor and helps form the base for the thickened sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly in melted butter, giving it body.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, adding richness and creaminess as it thickens.

The step that matters

Adding the flour to the butter. Stirring the flour into melted butter until smooth and frothy cooks out raw flour taste and helps prevent lumps when the liquid is added.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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