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Of Spinach

A sautéed spinach dish thickened with flour and flavored with broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch the spinach

  1. Clean the spinach and remove the stems.

  2. Wash and drain the leaves.

  3. Bring cold water and salt to a boil.

  4. Add the spinach to the boiling water.

  5. Drain the spinach.

  6. Place the drained spinach in cold water.

  7. Drain the spinach again.

  8. Chop the spinach finely.

Finish the spinach

  1. Return the chopped spinach to the heat without water.

  2. Cook until slightly dry.

  3. Add flour to the spinach.

  4. Stir to mix the flour into the spinach.

  5. Add gravy or broth to the spinach.

  6. Stir until the mixture is combined.

  7. Season with salt to taste.

  8. Serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the body of the dish and supplies its green flavour and bulk.
Flour
Thickens the chopped spinach as it cooks, giving it a body that holds together.
Gravy or broth
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, loosening the thickened spinach.

The step that matters

Cook until slightly dry. Spinach releases a lot of water, and if it stays wet, the flour will clump and the mixture will be thin. Drying it over heat before adding flour lets the flour thicken it evenly.

“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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