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Creamed Spinach

Creamed spinach is a dish of finely chopped spinach mixed with butter and cream, served hot with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Creamed Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach thoroughly.

  2. Place the spinach in a kettle with no added water.

  3. Cover and cook until very tender.

  4. Drain the spinach.

Make the creamed spinach

  1. Chop the spinach very finely.

  2. Whip the chopped spinach with the butter and cream until you have a soft green mass.

  3. Return the mixture to the saucepan.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt.

  5. Stir steadily until very hot.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot platter garnished with triangles of thin, dry toast.

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

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

  2. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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 and cooks down to a tender, soft green mass.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, helping the chopped spinach become smooth and creamy.

The step that matters

Cook the spinach with no added water. Spinach holds plenty of its own water, which turns to steam under a lid and cooks it gently. Without watching the heat, it can scorch on the bottom of the pan before it becomes fully tender.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream. 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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