Name: Spinach Puree
Ingredients: cooked spinach; coarse sea salt; paprika; butter; lemon juice; cooking stock from tongue

Why it works: Spinach and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,109 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Spinach Puree

Ingredients

Directions

Pass the cooked spinach through a sieve or chop it finely.
Season with coarse sea salt, paprika, butter, lemon juice, and a little of the cooking stock.
Garnish with the white of an 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.

Spinach + lemontop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,109 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,583 recipes

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