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Spinach on Toast

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 on Toast

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the spinach thoroughly to remove all grit, then soak it in cold water for a while.

  2. Boil the spinach in salted water for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Drain the spinach and cut it into coarse pieces.

  4. Place the spinach in a hot dish, sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt, and pour melted butter over it.

  5. Butter small pieces of toasted bread and arrange them on a hot platter.

  6. Top the toasted bread with portions of spinach and garnish with slices of hard boiled egg.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  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

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, bread, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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