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Berlin Spinach

A spinach dish cooked in a cream sauce and garnished with hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Berlin Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach thoroughly to remove all sand.

  2. Drain the spinach and place it in a large kettle without adding water.

  3. Sprinkle with ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt for each 2 quarts of spinach.

  4. Cover the kettle and toss the leaves occasionally to ensure even cooking.

  5. When tender, drain the spinach in a colander and chop it finely.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, make a cream sauce by combining 1 cup of milk with 1 heaping tablespoon of flour, seasoning with salt and pepper, and adding 1 tablespoon of butter.

  2. Stir the chopped spinach into the cream sauce until heated through.

Serve

  1. Serve in a vegetable dish and garnish with slices of hard boiled eggs.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Fresh spinach
Cooks down in its own moisture to become tender, forming the bulk of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream sauce, giving it a smooth, pourable body.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a cream sauce as its starch gelatinizes when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel in the cream sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the spinach without added water. Spinach holds enough moisture to steam in a covered kettle. Tossing it helps it cook evenly, and draining it well before chopping keeps excess water from thinning the cream sauce.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatofits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

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