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S'fEWED Spinach

Sautéed spinach cooked with butter, cream, and coarse sea salt, served with toasted bread and optional poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

S'fEWED Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick and wash the spinach well.

  2. Put it into a pan with ½ cup of boiling water and 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt.

  3. Boil gently until tender.

  4. Pour into a sieve to drain, pressing out the water.

  5. Beat the spinach in a bowl with a wooden spoon or potato masher.

Finish and serve

  1. Return it to the pan, add the butter and cream, and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Serve with slices of toasted bread and poached eggs.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, once cooked and pressed, gives it a soft, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel as it melts into the warm spinach.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the spinach and rounding out its flavour.
Poached eggs
Add richness and a runny yolk that enriches the spinach when served together.

The step that matters

Pressing out the water after boiling. Spinach holds a large amount of water. If it is not drained and pressed well, the purée will be watery and dilute the butter and cream, so the finished dish will lack body.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, pepper, bread, 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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