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Stewed Spinach and Eggs

A dish of stewed spinach topped with poached eggs, garnished with orange and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and orange work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 276 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Spinach and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick and wash the spinach thoroughly.

  2. Place the spinach in a saucepan with a little coarse sea salt.

  3. Cover and shake the pan often until the spinach is tender.

  4. Drain the spinach in a sieve.

  5. Lay the drained spinach on a serving dish.

Poach the eggs

  1. Boil water in a stewpan.

  2. Crack the eggs into cups for poaching.

  3. Once the water is boiling, gently add the eggs.

  4. Use an egg slice to remove the eggs when cooked.

Serve

  1. Place the poached eggs on the spinach.

  2. Garnish with orange quarters.

  3. Serve with melted butter.

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 + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  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 bulk of the dish and wilts down into a soft, tender bed.
Eggs
Set into soft, tender whites with runny yolks that enrich the greens.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky fat to the serving.

The step that matters

Gently add the eggs to boiling water. Eggs dropped into water that is only lightly simmering or too vigorously boiling can spread or break apart. Cracking each egg into a cup first lets it slide in gently so the white sets around the yolk.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, egg, butter. 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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