Skip to main content
Side

Spinach a LA Creme

A creamy spinach side dish made with butter, flour, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 a LA Creme

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Cook spinach in boiling salted water until tender; drain and chop.

Make the creamed spinach

  1. In a pan, melt butter and stir in flour.

  2. Mix the butter-flour mixture with spinach.

  3. Add cream, salt, and pepper; cook slightly.

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 carries the creamy sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and forms the base for the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated with liquid.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, becoming a smooth sauce with the flour.

The step that matters

Add cream, salt, and pepper; cook slightly.. Flour thickens only when its starch heats in liquid. Stir while the cream warms so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps, and keep it moving until it coats the spinach.

Swap the spinach

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

  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, flour, cream, pepper. 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

Eggplant CakesEggplant Cakes34 recipesEscalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)Escalloped Tomatoes (Scalloped Tomatoes)25 recipesParsnip CroquettesParsnip Croquettes12 recipesOnion PuddingOnion Pudding9 recipes