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Spinach in the French Manner

Spinach cooked with butter, flour, salt, cream or egg yolks, stock, and sugar, served with fried bread or puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 in the French Manner

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick, boil, strain, and press the spinach.

  2. Place the spinach in a pan of fresh water and cool it.

  3. Form the spinach into balls and squeeze out excess water.

  4. Chop the spinach finely on a board.

Make the purée

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the spinach.

  2. Mix well for 10 minutes.

  3. Lightly sprinkle with flour and salt.

  4. Gradually add boiling cream or beaten egg yolks, omitting flour if using eggs.

  5. Add velouté or stock and sugar, mixing well.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with fried bread or puff pastry.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, supplying the green flavour and body of the purée.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the spinach as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the spinach by absorbing liquid and helping it hold together.
Cream or egg yolks
Adds richness and body; egg yolks also help the purée set and thicken when gently heated.

The step that matters

Gradually add boiling cream or beaten egg yolks. Adding the liquid slowly and mixing well keeps it evenly blended, so the purée thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy or curdled.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, cream, sugar, 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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