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Plain Spinach

Boiled spinach seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter, served with toast garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,400 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Plain Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the spinach in just enough water to prevent burning for 10 to 15 minutes with salt.

  2. Drain the spinach, squeeze it dry, and chop it finely.

  3. In a clean saucepan, combine the chopped spinach with butter and pepper. Stir over heat until hot, then serve on a warm dish garnished with toast.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  3. 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

Fresh spinach
Forms the main body of the dish, and cooking it down concentrates its flavor.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the spinach and giving it a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Squeezing the spinach dry. Spinach holds a lot of water after boiling. Excess liquid dilutes the butter and makes the dish soggy, so squeezing it thoroughly before chopping keeps the texture firm and the flavor concentrated.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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