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Spinach, Nu Jus

A spinach dish cooked with butter, flour, stock, and veal broth, finished with butter and fried sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spinach, Nu Jus

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Drain and press all the water out of the spinach.

  2. Chop the spinach very fine.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a stewpan.

  2. Sprinkle the flour over the melted butter.

  3. Add the salt and shake over the fire for 3 minutes.

  4. Put in the spinach and stir for 5 minutes.

  5. Add the stock to moisten the spinach.

  6. Gradually add the veal broth or gravy, stirring well.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the remaining butter just before serving.

  2. Garnish the dish with fried sippets.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Flour + vealtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,886 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 (in the method)
Forms the body of the dish once chopped fine and cooked down in the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce and the spinach.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Veal broth or gravy
Supplies the liquid that, combined with the roux, forms the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the broth or gravy. Adding liquid gradually while stirring keeps the roux smooth, so the sauce thickens evenly without lumps.

“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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