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Spinach a LA Creme in Bread Cases

Spinach à la Crème in Bread Cases is a dish of sautéed spinach served in fried bread squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 a LA Creme in Bread Cases

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach in four changes of water and remove any faded leaves.

  2. Place the spinach in a pan on the back of the stove and cook slowly without adding water.

  3. Move the pan to a hotter part of the stove and cook until the spinach is tender, stirring occasionally.

  4. Chop the cooked spinach in a bowl and rub it through a colander.

Season and fry the cases

  1. Reheat the spinach, then add salt, pepper, butter, and cream, stirring to combine.

  2. Fry the bread slices in butter until golden brown, then cut them into squares.

  3. Serve the spinach in the fried bread cases.

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

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

  4. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives the dish its body and green flavour.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness, making the spinach smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour to the spinach and browns the bread cases in frying.
Bread
Forms a crisp, golden case that holds the spinach filling.

The step that matters

Cook the spinach slowly without water. Spinach releases its own moisture as it cooks. Cooking it slowly on the cooler part of the stove lets that water evaporate gradually, so the purée does not turn watery and loose when cream is added.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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