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A sauce made from cooked greens, butter, flour, broth, and vinegar, served hot with fried bread sippets.

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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Remove excess water from the cooked greens and chop them slightly.

Make the gravy

  1. In a clean saucepan, heat the greens with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Dredge in flour and stir well.

  3. Add broth or gravy and boil quickly until the mixture is fairly dry.

  4. Stir in vinegar or lemon juice and serve hot with fried sippets.

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. 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. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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

Greens
Form the bulk of the dish and carry the flavour of the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the liquid and helps the greens bind into a coating-like mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the greens.
Broth or gravy
Supplies the liquid that is reduced to create a savoury, concentrated coating.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Boil quickly until fairly dry. Flour thickens the liquid only as it cooks; boiling hard reduces excess moisture so the greens hold together rather than turning watery. Stopping too early leaves the gravy thin and diluted.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, vinegar, bread. 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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