Skip to main content
Main

Spinach Soup

A soup made from boiled spinach, butter, salt, vegetable stock, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Spinach Soup

Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the spinach until tender, then drain and chop it.

  2. In a pot, melt the butter and add the chopped spinach.

  3. Season with salt and cook for a few minutes.

  4. Press the mixture through a sieve into the vegetable stock.

  5. Add the cream and let it boil for a moment.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Spinach + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together870 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Spinach + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the main body and green flavour of the soup once cooked and pureed.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour into the spinach as it cooks.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the soup.
Vegetable stock
Forms the liquid base that the spinach is pressed into and carries the flavour.

The step that matters

Pressing the spinach through a sieve. Pressing the cooked spinach into the stock breaks down its fibres, so the soup becomes smooth rather than stringy or grainy.

Swap the spinach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, cream, onion, carrot, celery):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream, onion, carrot, celery. 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.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCream of SpinachCream of Spinach29 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes