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Cream of Spinach

A creamy soup made from spinach, milk, butter, flour, onion, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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. Cook spinach with ½ cup of water for 10 minutes.

  2. Drain the spinach and chop finely.

Make the soup

  1. Cook flour and butter together to make a white sauce.

  2. Stir the sauce into hot milk with onion and bay leaf.

  3. Add the chopped spinach to the mixture.

  4. Cook for 2 minutes.

  5. Strain the soup through a coarse sieve.

  6. 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.

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 + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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 of flavour and the green colour of the soup.
Butter
Fat that enriches the flavour and combines with flour to form the white sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and gives it a creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a white sauce, giving the soup body.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce into hot milk. Flour thickens smoothly only when the roux is blended into hot liquid gradually, so the sauce is stirred in steadily to avoid lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, butter, milk, flour, 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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