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Spinach

A simple sautéed spinach dish cooked with butter and seasoned with salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,583 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach in several waters to remove grit, lifting it out with your hands.

  2. Double each leaf together and tear away the stalk.

  3. Place the spinach in a large iron pan with the water that clings to it.

Cook and press

  1. Stir the spinach continuously to prevent burning.

  2. Boil the spinach until tender, about 10 to 15 minutes.

  3. Pour the spinach into a colander.

  4. Press out the water using a vegetable presser or the back of a plate.

  5. Chop the spinach finely.

  6. Rub the spinach through a wire sieve for a finer texture.

Finish with butter

  1. Melt the butter in the pan.

  2. Add the chopped spinach to the pan.

  3. Season with salt to taste.

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 + 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
Forms the bulk of the dish; cooking softens its fibres into a tender, silky texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the cooked spinach.

The step that matters

Stirring the spinach continuously. Spinach holds little liquid once wilted and its sugars and starches scorch quickly on contact with hot metal. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly and keeps the leaves from burning on the pan base.

“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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