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Puree of Spinach

A smooth spinach puree made with butter, chicken broth, cream, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

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 ↓

Puree of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a stew pan, melt the butter and add the spinach.

  2. Stir over medium heat for a few minutes.

  3. Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil.

  4. Reduce heat and let it simmer for about 1 hour.

  5. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  6. Return to the heat, add cream, and season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Spinach + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,146 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the main body of the puree, supplying color, flavor and bulk.
Butter
Adds fat for a rounder, smoother mouthfeel and carries flavor.
Chicken broth
Provides liquid and savory flavor as the spinach simmers and softens.
Cream
Adds richness and a silkier texture to the finished puree.

The step that matters

Simmering for about 1 hour. Long simmering softens the spinach fibers so the puree can pass smoothly through a sieve. Keeping the heat low avoids scorching the broth and dulling the bright green color.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, chicken, cream, 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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