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To Boil Spinach

A boiled spinach dish seasoned with salt and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,583 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

To Boil Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Remove each leaf from the stem.

  2. Wash the leaves in several waters.

  3. Drain the spinach.

Boil and drain

  1. Boil in a large quantity of water, changing the water frequently.

  2. Add a little salt.

  3. Boil until soft.

  4. Strain through a towel.

  5. Pour cold water over it to make it mild.

  6. Squeeze out excess water.

  7. Chop finely.

Finish and serve

  1. Place in a saucepan with a little salt and butter, and stir.

  2. Heat until hot.

  3. Transfer to a flat dish.

  4. Mark in squares with a knife for easy serving.

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 + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh spinach leaves
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking down to a soft, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Squeezing out excess water. Spinach holds a large amount of water, and leftover moisture would make the finished dish watery and dilute its flavour. Squeezing after cooling and chopping removes it so the spinach holds together and absorbs the butter and salt.

“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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