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Puree of Spinach

A smooth spinach puree made with butter, chicken broth, cream, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Puree of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the spinach

  1. In a stew pan, combine the spinach and butter.

  2. Stir over medium heat for a few minutes.

  3. Add the chicken broth.

  4. Bring to a boil for about 1 hour.

Strain and finish

  1. Pass the mixture through a sieve and return it to the heat.

  2. Add the cream, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,146 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the body and green flavor of the puree once cooked and strained.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps carry flavor as the spinach softens.
Chicken broth
Provides the cooking liquid and savory flavor that softens the spinach.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the finished puree.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Bring to a boil for about 1 hour. Prolonged boiling breaks down chlorophyll, which turns spinach from bright green to dull olive-brown. Keeping the heat and time in check protects the color and fresh flavor of the puree.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, chicken, cream, 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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