Skip to main content
Main

Spinach Stewed with Cream

A stew of fresh spinach cooked with butter, salt, and heavy cream, garnished with fried paste or bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spinach Stewed with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach until tender, then chop it well.

  2. Strain off the liquid and place the spinach in a stewpan.

Make the stew

  1. Add the butter and salt, stirring well as it cooks.

  2. Gradually add enough cream to achieve a proper thickness.

  3. Garnish with fried paste or bread before serving.

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  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 body of the stew and gives it its green color and earthy flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and giving the stew a smooth mouthfeel.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and, as it reduces, thickens the stew to a creamy consistency.

The step that matters

Adding the cream gradually. Cream thickens as it warms and reduces, and adding it all at once can make the stew too loose or cause it to split. Adding it slowly lets you stop when the thickness is right.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes