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Drink

Essence of Spinach, or Green Essence

A liquid made by crushing spinach, simmering, and straining, optionally sweetened with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 32% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,033 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Essence of Spinach, or Green Essence

Ingredients

Directions

Make the essence

  1. Pound the spinach in a mortar until well crushed.

  2. Place the crushed spinach in a saucepan over low heat.

  3. Remove from heat just before boiling.

  4. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Store

  1. Store with a little sugar if desired.

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 + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh spinach
Provides the main flavour and green colour of the essence.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and can help balance the grassy taste of the spinach.

The step that matters

Remove from heat just before boiling. Spinach colour and fresh flavour break down with prolonged heat, so stopping just short of boiling helps keep the essence bright green and fresh-tasting.

“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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