Name: Spinach
Ingredients: fresh spinach; coarse sea salt; butter; hard boiled egg

Why it works: Butter and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Spinach

Ingredients

fresh spinach
coarse sea salt
butter
hard boiled egg

Directions

Pick over the spinach and cut off the roots.
Wash the spinach thoroughly in cold water.
Place the spinach in a kettle with no water and a little salt.
Cook slowly at first, then boil until tender.
Drain and chop the spinach finely.
Season with salt, pepper, and butter.
Garnish with hard boiled egg.

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.

Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,323 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,583 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).