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Spinach, with Cream

A dish of sautéed spinach cooked with butter, cream, nutmeg, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Prepare the spinach by removing any straws or stalks.

  2. Chop or pound the spinach, then rub it through a coarse sieve.

Cook and finish

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

  2. Add the spinach, nutmeg, and a pinch of salt; stir until warm.

  3. Mix in the double cream, additional butter, and powdered sugar.

  4. Serve the spinach garnished as desired.

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 gives it its green color and earthy flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving the spinach a smooth, silky texture.
Double cream
Adds richness and body, making the spinach creamy and smooth.

The step that matters

Stir the spinach until warm, not boiling. Spinach is delicate and can turn grainy or split when the butter and cream are overheated, so gentle warming keeps the mixture smooth.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, nutmeg, cream, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, cream, sugar. 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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