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Spinach

A simple sautéed spinach dish cooked with butter, salt, pepper, and optional cream, served with croutons or potatoes.

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 ↓

Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach thoroughly in several washes to remove grit.

  2. If the spinach is young, place it in a saucepan without additional water; if it is old, add boiling water with salt.

  3. Cook the spinach with the lid off until tender, stirring occasionally if no water is used.

  4. Drain the spinach in a colander and wring it dry in a cloth.

  5. Chop or rub the spinach through a wire sieve.

Sauté and serve

  1. In a saucepan, mix the spinach with butter, pepper, and salt over heat.

  2. Optionally, add cream but avoid making it too moist.

  3. Press the mixture into a mound or pyramid shape in a serving dish and garnish with fried croutons or sautéed potatoes.

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

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

  3. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

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

  5. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the body of the dish; cooking softens its leaves and wringing out excess water concentrates its flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the spinach a glossy, smooth texture.
Cream
Optionally adds richness and a silkier texture, but too much adds moisture that loosens the dish.

The step that matters

Wringing the spinach dry. Spinach holds a lot of water. If excess moisture stays in, the spinach becomes soggy and diluted, so it should be drained and squeezed in a cloth before the butter is added.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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