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Spinach Patties

Spinach patties are puff pastry turnovers filled with spinach puree, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 Patties

8 patties

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the filling

  1. Drain the spinach very dry.

  2. Moisten the spinach with cream and add a pinch of nutmeg.

Shape and fill

  1. Make 8 miniature oyster patty shapes from puff pastry.

  2. Fill each patty with the spinach puree.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the tops with a mixture of butter and beaten egg.

  2. Heat in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden and serve on a napkin.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  4. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the bulk and green filling; draining it dry keeps the filling from making the pastry soggy.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the spinach form a smooth puree.
Puff pastry
Forms the flaky, layered shell that bakes up crisp around the filling.
Egg
Mixed with butter and brushed on top, it promotes browning and a glossy golden finish.
Butter
Mixed with egg for the glaze, adding fat that helps the tops brown and taste rich.

The step that matters

Drain the spinach very dry. Excess water turns to steam in the oven and soaks the pastry from inside, so it stays soft instead of flaky. Dry spinach keeps the shell crisp.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Leekfits about as well
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

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