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Cream of Spinach

A creamy spinach dish made by simmering spinach, blending butter and flour, adding milk, and seasoning with salt and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream of Spinach

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 ↓

Cream of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Clean the spinach thoroughly.

  2. Cook the spinach in 1 pint of water for 30 minutes.

  3. Pass the cooked spinach through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, blend together the butter and flour.

  2. Add the milk to the butter and flour mixture and stir until smooth.

  3. Incorporate the spinach into the mixture and season with salt and pepper.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main flavor and green color, and its pulp gives the soup body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor, and forms the base of the roux with flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup with butter as a roux, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and moisture, turning the thickened base into a smooth cream.

The step that matters

Add the milk to the butter and flour mixture gradually. Adding liquid all at once to a roux can trap lumps of flour. Stirring steadily while adding the milk keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce stays smooth and thickens evenly.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

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