Skip to main content
Main

A New Way to Cook Spinach

Spinach croquettes made with onion, butter, flour, breadcrumbs, cheese, egg yolks, milk, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A New Way to Cook Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Cook and finely chop the spinach.

  2. In a skillet, brown the onion in butter, then remove the onion.

  3. Add the spinach to the skillet, stirring constantly.

  4. Gradually add the flour, bread crumbs, grated cheese, beaten egg yolks, milk, salt, and nutmeg.

Shape and fry

  1. Turn the mixture onto a floured board and mold into croquettes using floured hands.

  2. Cook the croquettes in hot deep fat until golden brown.

  3. Drain and dust with grated cheese before serving.

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

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

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

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

  3. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Bind the mixture and help the croquettes hold their shape while cooking.
Flour
Thickens the spinach mixture so it can be shaped without falling apart.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the croquettes a firmer, drier body.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and helps the croquettes bind and brown.
Butter
Adds richness and browns the onion, building flavor for the filling.

The step that matters

Mold the croquettes with floured hands. The mixture is soft and moist, so it sticks easily. Flour on the board and hands keeps it workable, and the mixture should be firm enough to hold its shape before it goes into the hot fat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, bread, cheese, egg, milk, nutmeg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, bread, cheese, egg, milk, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes