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Spinach, with Cream

A creamy spinach dish made with butter, nutmeg, double cream, and sugar.

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, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the spinach by washing it thoroughly and removing any straws or stems.

  2. Chop the spinach finely and place it in a saucepan with 2 ounces of butter, nutmeg, and a little salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Stir the mixture over medium heat until warmed through.

  2. Add the double cream, 2 pats of butter, and pounded sugar, mixing well over the heat.

  3. Serve the spinach in a dish as directed.

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

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. 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, once cooked down, gives it its body and green flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the spinach a smooth, glossy texture.
Double cream
Adds richness and body, thickening the spinach into a creamy coating when mixed over heat.
Pounded sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savory spinach and cream.

The step that matters

Mixing the cream over the heat. Cream can split or turn grainy if it boils hard or curdles, so keep the heat gentle and stir steadily to keep the sauce smooth.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, 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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