Skip to main content
Main

New Spinach with Poached Eggs

A dish of sautéed spinach topped with poached eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

New Spinach with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Trim the roots and tough stalks from the spinach and wash it in cold salted water until free from sand.

  2. Boil the spinach in salted water for 3 minutes until just tender, then drain.

  3. Cool the spinach in a large bowl of cold water, then chop finely or mash through a colander.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat the chopped spinach in a pan and season it with salt and pepper.

  2. Poach the eggs until soft.

  3. Serve the spinach hot with the poached eggs on top.

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. Spinach + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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 bulk of the dish, adding leafy texture and a mild, earthy flavour.
Eggs
Set when poached to provide a soft, runny yolk that enriches the spinach.

The step that matters

Poaching the eggs until soft. Eggs cook quickly once in simmering water, and the proteins set progressively with heat. Pulling them as soon as the whites are set but the yolks still soft keeps the yolks runny rather than firm or chalky.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Chivefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg. 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.

You might also like

Spinach SoupSpinach Soup50 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesCreamed Spinach SoupCreamed Spinach Soup19 recipesSpinach and EggsSpinach and Eggs8 recipes