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Sweet Spinach

A sweet spinach dish made with spinach paste, butter, flour, sugar, cream, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Sweet Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spinach

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter.

  2. Add the spinach paste and let it sweat over low heat until dry.

  3. Mix in the flour, salt, and sugar.

  4. Stir in the cream (or cream and milk) and let it stew gently until done.

Serve

  1. Serve with sippets and sprinkle with grated nutmeg.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach paste
Forms the main body of the dish and carries its flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the spinach cook in a fat base.
Fine flour
Thickens the spinach as it stews, giving it a smoother body.
Grated loaf sugar
Adds sweetness, which is the defining feature of this dish.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the mixture stew to a creamy texture.

The step that matters

Letting the spinach sweat until dry. Excess water left in the spinach would dilute the cream and flour and keep the mixture loose. Cooking off the moisture over low heat concentrates the flavour and lets the later thickening work properly.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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