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Spinach with Gravy

Spinach with gravy is a cooked spinach dish thickened with flour and served on fried or toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Prepare and cook the spinach as directed in a previous recipe.

  2. Rub the cooked spinach through a fine sieve into a stewpan.

Make the gravy base

  1. Add butter, brown gravy, and a little pepper to the spinach.

  2. Sprinkle in the flour and stir over medium heat until the mixture thickens to a creamy consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve the spinach on fried or toasted bread, garnished with additional bread pieces or designs made from puff pastry or egg white.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Spinach + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the main body of the dish and gives its green colour and earthy flavour.
Flour
Thickens the spinach mixture into a creamy consistency as it heats.
Brown gravy
Adds savoury depth and moisture to the spinach.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour over medium heat. Flour must be stirred continuously while the mixture heats so it dissolves evenly and thickens smoothly; if it is added without enough stirring or heat is too high, it can clump or scorch.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, butter, bread. 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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