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Spinach Tortilla

A spinach tortilla made with eggs, butter, lemon juice, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Spinach Tortilla

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Sprinkle lemon juice over the spinach.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Fry the spinach lightly in the butter.

Make the tortilla

  1. Beat the eggs and mix them into the spinach mixture.

  2. Let the tortilla set.

  3. Turn it using a plate to cook the other side.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a firm, sliceable structure as their proteins coagulate with heat.
Butter
Provides fat for frying the spinach, adding richness and flavor.
Spinach
Forms the bulk of the filling, adding flavor and moisture within the set eggs.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the eggs and spinach.

The step that matters

Turn it using a plate to cook the other side. Egg proteins set from the heat up, so the top must be firm enough to hold its shape. Flipping too early tears the tortilla and leaves it runny in the middle.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Asparagusfits about as well
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Spinachthe original
  4. Shallotfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, lemon, pepper. 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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