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Spinach Sauce

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Spinach Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the stalks from the spinach leaves.

  2. Wash and drain the leaves.

  3. Stew the leaves without water until they can be mashed.

  4. Add a good piece of butter and some milk.

  5. Simmer over low heat until the sauce is the consistency of thick melted butter.

  6. Add a little cream if desired.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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