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To Stew Spinach, Water Cresses, Etc.

A stew of spinach cooked with butter, flour, optional cream or egg, and seasoned with salt or sugar, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

To Stew Spinach, Water Cresses, Etc.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach in several waters.

  2. Pick the spinach well.

  3. Boil the spinach for a few minutes.

  4. Drain the spinach and squeeze out the water using a cloth or colander.

  5. Chop the spinach finely.

Make the stew

  1. Place the chopped spinach in a saucepan over moderate heat and stir the spinach until dry.

  2. Add the butter to the spinach and stir the butter into the spinach for 10 minutes.

  3. Dredge the spinach in the flour while stirring.

  4. Add cream or an egg mixed with milk to the spinach.

  5. Season the spinach with salt or sugar.

  6. Stir the mixture until the moisture evaporates.

Serve

  1. Add lemon juice after removing from heat.

  2. Press the spinach into a hot mold.

  3. Serve the spinach hot with sippets.

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 + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 body of the stew and carries the flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the spinach a smooth, silky texture.
Flour
Thickens the stew as it cooks, helping it hold together.
Cream
Adds richness and body, softening the texture of the stew.
Egg
Helps bind and thicken the mixture when it is gently cooked.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture until the moisture evaporates. Excess water from the spinach dilutes the thickening. Cooking it off while stirring keeps the stew thick rather than watery, and lets the flour and butter coat the leaves evenly.

Swap the lemon

The recipe marks lemon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, butter, flour, cream, egg, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, flour, cream, egg, sugar. 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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