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Spinach, American Style

Spinach sautéed with butter, seasoned, and finished with veal gravy, served with hard‑boiled eggs or buttered toast.

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 ↓

Spinach, American Style

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare and cook the spinach as directed in a previous recipe.

  2. Chop the cooked spinach finely.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped spinach, season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and stir well.

  3. When warmed through, add veal gravy and mix.

  4. Serve garnished with quartered hard-boiled eggs or fancy-shaped buttered toast.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 provides its green, slightly earthy base.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying the seasoning and helping the spinach coat smoothly.
Veal gravy
Adds savoury depth and moisture, binding the chopped spinach into a cohesive dish.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, veal, egg. 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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