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To Boil Spinach

A boiled spinach dish served with buttered toast, optionally topped with poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 866 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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.

  4. Place the spinach in a saucepan with salt and a small piece of washing soda if it's old.

  5. Cover the saucepan.

  6. Boil until soft, stirring occasionally.

  7. Strain the water through a sieve.

  8. Pour cold water over the spinach.

  9. Squeeze out excess water.

  10. Chop the spinach.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the spinach in a saucepan with a little vinegar and butter.

  2. Stir over heat until hot.

  3. Place the buttered toast on a flat dish.

  4. Top the toast with spinach.

  5. Cut into squares for easy serving.

  6. Add poached eggs on top.

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 + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together866 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. 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

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the dish, and its leaves soften and collapse into a tender mass when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth fat coating that carries flavour through the spinach.
Salt
Seasons the spinach as it cooks, bringing out its flavour.
Vinegar
Adds a slight acidity that brightens the flavour of the cooked spinach.

The step that matters

Squeeze out excess water after cooling. Spinach holds a lot of water. If it is not squeezed well, the extra liquid dilutes the butter and vinegar and makes the toast soggy.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, vinegar. 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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