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Potatoes and Spinach

A baked casserole of mashed potatoes and chopped spinach flavored with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Potatoes and Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then mash them.

  2. Boil the spinach, chop it finely, and mix it with the mashed potatoes.

  3. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sweet butter to the mixture.

  4. Combine everything thoroughly and transfer to a pie dish.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the top is golden brown.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Potato + spinachtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the casserole, giving a soft, starchy body once mashed.
Spinach
Adds moisture and a green, earthy flavor to the mashed base.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the mash a smoother texture and flavor.

The step that matters

Bake until the top is golden brown. Browning on the surface comes from the Maillard reaction, which needs dry heat. Watching the color rather than only the clock helps the top brown without drying the interior.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, pepper, nutmeg, butter. 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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