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Spinach, with Cream

A creamy spinach dish made by boiling spinach, then mixing it with a butter, flour, and cream sauce.

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 ↓

Spinach, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil spinach until tender.

  2. Strain and press through a wire sieve.

Make the creamed spinach

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Stir in flour and cook for a minute without browning.

  3. Add spinach puree to butter and flour mixture. Mix well.

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. Cream + buttertop 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 bulk of the dish and supplies the green color and vegetable flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and spinach mixture into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, loosening the sauce and giving it a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. The flour must cook briefly without browning so it thickens smoothly and loses its raw starchy taste. Browning changes the flavor and color, and cooking too little leaves the sauce pasty.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

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

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