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Spinach with Gravy

Spinach cooked in butter, flour, and gravy, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Spinach with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach leaves and boil them in salted water until half done.

  2. Strain the spinach and boil it again in fresh salted water until fully cooked.

  3. Place the cooked spinach in a colander and rinse with cold water.

  4. Press out excess water and chop the spinach into a fine paste.

Cook and serve

  1. Melt butter in a stewpan and add the chopped spinach, cooking gently until dry.

  2. Dredge the spinach with flour, then add gravy and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Serve with sippets fried in butter.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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
Forms the bulk of the dish, providing its body and green colour once cooked down.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while cooking the spinach gently and frying the sippets.
Flour
Dredged over the dry spinach so it thickens the gravy and gives a smooth, cohesive texture.
Gravy
Supplies the liquid and savoury flavour that binds the spinach into a moist dish.

The step that matters

Cooking the spinach until dry. Pressing and cooking the chopped spinach gently until dry removes excess water, so the flour thickens the gravy instead of making the dish watery.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, bread. 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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