Name: Spinach Dressed with Cream, À LA Prançaise
Ingredients: 2 pailfuls of spinach; 2 tablespoons of coarse sea salt; 2 ounces of butter; 8 tablespoons of cream; 1 teaspoon of powdered sugar; a pinch of grated nutmeg

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 ↓

Spinach Dressed with Cream, À LA Prançaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

Boil and drain the spinach, then chop it finely.

Make the creamed spinach

In a stewpan, melt the butter over gentle heat.
Add the chopped spinach and stir until the butter has evaporated.
Mix in the cream, powdered sugar, and nutmeg, and simmer for about 5 minutes.
Before adding the cream, boil it to prevent curdling.

Serve

Serve hot, garnished with toasted bread or puff pastry.

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.

Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together603 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,920 recipes

Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).
Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together24,377 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 gives it its green flavour and body.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Cream: Adds moisture and a silky texture that binds the spinach together.
Powdered sugar: Adds a light sweetness that balances the bitterness of the spinach.
Nutmeg: Adds a warm, aromatic note that complements the dairy and greens.

The step that matters

Boiling the cream before adding it. Dairy proteins can separate or curdle when cream is exposed to heat or sudden temperature change. Boiling the cream first and then mixing it into the spinach helps keep the sauce smooth and cohesive.

Swap the spinach

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

Sweet potatofits better
Leekfits about as well
Potatofits about as well
Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, sugar, nutmeg. 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.

Spinach Soup50 recipes

Cream of Spinach29 recipes

Spinach and Eggs8 recipes

Tomato Soup526 recipes

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Spinach Dressed with Cream, À LA Prançaise