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Stewed Spinach and Eggs

A simple dish of stewed spinach topped with poached eggs and orange garnish, finished with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and orange work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 276 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Spinach and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick and wash the spinach thoroughly.

  2. Place it in a saucepan with the salt and cover it tightly.

  3. Shake the pan often until the spinach is tender and bright green.

  4. Drain the spinach in a sieve and lay it on a serving dish.

Poach and serve the eggs

  1. In a separate pot, bring water to a boil.

  2. Break the eggs into cups and gently slide them into the boiling water.

  3. Use a slotted spoon to remove the poached eggs and place them on the spinach.

  4. Garnish the dish with orange quarters and drizzle with melted butter.

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 + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Orange + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Cooks down into tender greens that form the base of the dish.
Eggs
Set when poached, providing a soft, rich centre over the spinach.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the spinach and eggs with flavour.

The step that matters

Poaching the eggs in boiling water. Sliding eggs into water that is not gently simmering can scatter the whites. Cracking each egg into a cup first and lowering it gently lets the white set around the yolk, keeping the eggs intact.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, egg, butter. 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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