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A sautéed green vegetable dish thickened with flour, seasoned with pepper and salt, finished with broth and vinegar, served with fried bread snippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Cook the greens in boiling water for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on their age.

  2. Drain and press out the water, then chop the greens slightly.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, heat the greens with pepper, salt, and butter.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and stir well.

  3. Add the broth or gravy and boil quickly until the mixture is fairly dry.

Finish and serve

  1. Stir in the vinegar or lemon juice and serve hot with fried bread snippets.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Greens
Provide the main body and flavor of the dish, and their moisture is reduced by pressing and boiling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and broth mixture into a sauce that clings to the greens.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavor to the greens and sauce.
Broth or gravy
Supplies savory liquid that the flour thickens and that reduces into a concentrated sauce.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory sauce and balances its flavor.

The step that matters

Boil quickly until fairly dry. Boiling off excess liquid concentrates the flavor and lets the flour thicken the sauce properly. If the mixture stays too wet, the sauce will be thin and watery.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Mustardfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, flour, vinegar, bread. 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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