Skip to main content
Main

Spinach Sauce

A sauce made from boiled spinach blended with butter, cream, sugar, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Spinach Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash and pick the spinach.

  2. Boil the spinach until very green.

  3. Strain the spinach and rub it through a wire sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. Add butter, cream, sugar, salt, and pepper to the spinach. Mix well to combine.

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the main body, color and fresh green flavor of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for smooth richness and a silky mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the sauce smoother and milder.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that softens the spinach's bitterness.

The step that matters

Boil the spinach until very green. Boiling briefly sets the bright green color by heating the chlorophyll. Overcooking dulls the color and turns the spinach drab and muddy.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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

Spinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesCreamed Spinach SoupCreamed Spinach Soup19 recipesSpinach and EggsSpinach and Eggs8 recipes