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Spinach, Boiled

A boiled spinach dish seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, and topped with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick the spinach from the stalks and wash it thoroughly in several waters.

Cook

  1. Boil the spinach in water until tender, about 15 minutes.

  2. Drain the spinach and pass it through a wire sieve.

Finish and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the spinach with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Mix well with a wooden spoon and serve in an entree dish topped with fried croutons.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  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 body of the dish, providing the bulk and flavour base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the spinach a smooth, glossy texture.

The step that matters

Pass the spinach through a wire sieve. Boiled spinach holds a lot of water and fibrous texture. Draining and sieving it well removes excess liquid and breaks down the fibres, so the butter can coat it evenly instead of leaving it watery.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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