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Spinach Puree

A smooth spinach puree made with cream, optional egg yolk, butter or cream, and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spinach Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Make the puree

  1. Pass the cooked spinach through a fine sieve.

  2. Return the sieved spinach to a saucepan.

  3. Add ½ cup of thick cream and stir until hot.

Finish and serve

  1. For a richer flavor, beat in the sieved yolk of a hard-boiled egg, along with a little butter or cream.

  2. Season to taste and serve.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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 puree and gives its green colour and vegetal flavour.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture that loosens the puree.
Hard-boiled egg yolk
Optional; adds richness and a smoother, more rounded body to the puree.
Butter
Optional; adds fat for extra richness and a silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Sieving the spinach. Passing the cooked spinach through a fine sieve breaks down fibres and removes stringy pieces, which is what gives the puree its smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this leaves the puree coarse and fibrous.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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