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Spinach Croutes

Creamed spinach purée thickened with a flour roux, served spooned over fried or toasted bread croutes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach Croutes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spinach sauce

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add flour and cook for a minute.

  3. Moisten with cream.

  4. Bring to a boil.

  5. Stir in spinach.

  6. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  7. Cook for 10 minutes.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture onto the prepared croutes, decorate with shapes of hard-boiled egg white, and 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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. 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 purée
Provides the main flavour and green colour, and adds moisture to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce, as its starch swells when heated in the melted butter.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, soft texture.

The step that matters

Add flour and cook for a minute. Cooking flour briefly in melted butter cooks out its raw taste and helps it blend smoothly, so the sauce thickens evenly without lumps when the cream is added.

“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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