Why it works: Spinach and bread work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓
Another Common English Receipt for Spinach
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the spinach
Remove the leaves from the stalks, ensuring to discard any weeds.
Wash the spinach thoroughly to remove all grit.
Cook
Place the spinach in a large saucepan with the water clinging to it.
Add the salt and press the spinach down with a wooden spoon, stirring often for about 15 minutes until tender.
Finish and serve
Drain excess moisture and chop the spinach quickly on a hot plate.
Serve immediately with fried bread sippets.
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.
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Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Fresh spinach
- Forms the main body of the dish; it wilts and softens as it cooks down with its own clinging water.
- Fried bread sippets
- Adds crisp, browned contrast to the soft, tender spinach.
The step that matters
Drain excess moisture and chop the spinach quickly on a hot plate. Spinach holds a lot of water, and excess liquid dilutes flavour and makes the dish watery. Chopping while hot keeps it warm and at its best texture before it cools.
“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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