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Spinach with Eggs

A sautéed spinach dish topped with a creamy egg yolk dressing and garnished with egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Spinach with Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the spinach

  1. Boil the spinach in plenty of salted water for 20 minutes.

  2. Drain the spinach well.

  3. Chop the spinach finely.

  4. In a pan, heat the chopped spinach with butter, sugar, salt, and pepper to taste.

  5. Transfer the spinach to a deep dish.

Dress and garnish

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks with melted butter, cream, and lemon juice until smooth.

  2. Spread the dressing over the spinach.

  3. Garnish with chopped egg whites.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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 holds the dressing on top.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the warm spinach.
Egg yolks
Mash into a smooth, rich dressing that gives the dish its body.
Cream
Loosens the yolk mixture and adds a soft, creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich yolk dressing.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness that softens the spinach's earthy bitterness.

The step that matters

Drain the spinach well. Excess water left in the chopped spinach dilutes the butter and yolk dressing and makes the dish watery. Squeezing out moisture keeps the dressing thick and clinging.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, pepper, egg, cream, lemon. 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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