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Imitation Spinach

A dish of young pumpkin shoots cooked with butter, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

Imitation Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shoots

  1. Wash the young green shoots of the pumpkin plant well.

  2. Place them in a large saucepan with a little water, ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt, and a pinch of carbonate of soda.

  3. Press the shoots down into the water and boil until soft.

  4. Drain in a colander and squeeze out excess moisture.

Finish and serve

  1. In a saucepan, combine the shoots with 1 ounce of butter, pepper, and a few drops of lemon juice.

  2. Stir until thoroughly heated, then serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pumpkin + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together600 recipes

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

  4. Pumpkin + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,933 recipes

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

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Young green shoots of pumpkin plant
Form the main body of the dish, cooked until soft and tender.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cooked shoots a smoother mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds a touch of acidity that brightens the flavour of the cooked greens.

The step that matters

Squeeze out excess moisture. Leftover water dilutes the butter and lemon juice and makes the greens watery. Squeezing after draining keeps the finished dish concentrated and well textured.

Swap the pumpkin

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Orangefits better
  3. Mangofits better
  4. Pumpkinthe original

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