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Spiced Coconut Spinach

The perfect simple, spinach side dish - toast a few spices, add a pile of shredded spinach to the skillet, and finish things off with a burst of lemon juice and some shredded coconut.

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Why it works: Spinach and coconut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and 170 recipes mention both. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

The recipe

Prep5 min
Cook5 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Finely chop the shallot and mince the garlic. Heat the ghee, clarified butter or sunflower oil in a large skillet over medium heat.

  2. Add the mustard seeds, cumin seeds and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring, until the mustard seeds begin to pop, about 30 seconds.

  3. Add the shallot and cook, stirring, until soft and lightly golden, about 2 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 30 seconds more.

  4. If using, add the finely sliced asparagus (optional) and cook, stirring, for about 2 minutes until just tender.

  5. Add the washed, chopped spinach in handfuls, letting each addition wilt before adding the next, about 2 minutes in total.

  6. Season with the fine sea salt, then squeeze in the lemon and stir to combine.

  7. Scatter the lightly toasted coconut over the spinach and serve hot.

By 101cookbooks. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Spinach + coconuttop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together170 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Garlic + cumintop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Garlic + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanol (resin, flower).

  4. Asparagus + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together274 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  5. Cumin + spinachtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together325 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the asparagus

The recipe marks asparagus as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (shallot, garlic, ghee, mustard, cumin, pepper, spinach):

  1. Broccolibetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Asparagusthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against shallot, garlic, ghee, mustard, cumin, pepper, spinach. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).