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Spinach a LA Frangaise

A sautéed spinach dish flavored with butter, cream, powdered sugar, and salt, topped with fried bread snippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spinach a LA Frangaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil, drain, and squeeze dry the spinach.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the spinach and cook until hot and dry.

  3. Add cream, powdered sugar, and salt; stir until moisture is absorbed.

  4. Turn onto a hot dish and garnish with fried bread snippets.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. 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 bulk of the dish and carries the creamy texture once cooked down.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the spinach and carrying flavor.
Cream
Adds moisture and a smooth, silky body to the spinach.
Powdered sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness that balances the bitterness of the spinach.

The step that matters

Squeeze the spinach dry. Excess water left in the spinach dilutes the cream and butter, so the sauce turns thin and watery instead of thick and clinging. Cooking until hot and dry, then stirring until moisture is absorbed, helps the dish hold together.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

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