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Spinach with Sauce

A sautéed spinach dish flavored with butter, gravy, sauce tournee, and seasoned with salt, served with toasted bread garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Spinach with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach until tender.

  2. Squeeze out excess water.

  3. Chop the spinach finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the chopped spinach in a saucepan with butter over medium heat.

  2. Cook until the butter melts and begins to fry.

  3. Add the gravy.

  4. Reduce the gravy.

  5. Stir in the sauce tournee.

  6. Cook for a few more minutes.

  7. Season with salt if needed.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a serving dish.

  2. Smooth it out.

  3. Garnish with toasted bread.

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

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Spinach + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together756 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + breadtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its body and green color.
Butter
Melts and fries the chopped spinach, adding richness and fat to the dish.
Gravy
Adds liquid and savory flavor, and reducing it thickens the mixture.
Sauce tournee
Adds body and flavor to the mixture as it finishes cooking.

The step that matters

Reduce the gravy. Reducing the gravy concentrates its flavor and thickens it through evaporation. If it is not reduced enough, the dish will be thin and watery; if cooked too long, it can become overly salty or sticky.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, 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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