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Spinach with Gravy

A creamy spinach sauce made with butter, flour, stock, and milk, seasoned with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach.

  2. Cover the bottom of a pan with water to prevent burning.

  3. Cook the spinach until tender.

  4. Drain the spinach and puree through a fine sieve.

Make the gravy

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and cook for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the spinach puree and stock, stirring continuously.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Add the milk and simmer for a few minutes.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve

  1. 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. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Chicken + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,389 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

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

Fresh spinach
Provides the main vegetable body and green flavour of the dish once pureed.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the roux that starts the gravy.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the gravy by forming a roux with the melted butter.
Stock
Supplies the liquid that turns the roux into a savoury gravy and carries the spinach flavour.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the gravy's savoury taste.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the butter. Cooking the flour for 2-3 minutes in the melted butter removes its raw starchy taste and helps it thicken evenly. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring prevents lumps from forming.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, chicken, milk, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, chicken, milk, 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.

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