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Stewed Spinach

A simple spinach dish simmered with butter, cream, and salt, served with toasted bread and optional poached eggs.

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 ↓

Stewed Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the spinach well.

  2. Put it into a pan with ½ cup of boiling water and 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt, then boil gently until tender.

Drain and mash

  1. Pour into a sieve to drain, pressing out the water.

  2. Beat in a bowl with a wooden spoon or potato masher.

Finish and serve

  1. Return to the pan, add the butter and cream.

  2. Season with pepper and salt, and serve with toasted bread and poached eggs.

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

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking down to a soft, tender mass.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the stewed greens.
Cream
Adds moisture and body, giving the spinach a softer, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Pressing out the water after boiling. Spinach holds a lot of water. If it is not drained and pressed well, the dish stays watery and dilutes the butter and cream, so the finished texture turns loose instead of rich.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Spinachthe original
  4. Potatofits about as well

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