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Soup

Cream of Spinach

A creamy spinach soup made with cream, butter, flour, and white stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Wash the spinach thoroughly in several waters.

  2. Cook the spinach in a covered pot without water for 20 minutes.

  3. Pass the cooked spinach through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Add the white stock.

  2. Melt the butter in a separate pan.

  3. Stir in the flour to make a roux.

  4. Stir the roux into the stock.

  5. Season with salt and pepper.

  6. Add the heated cream just before serving.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  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. Spinach + creamtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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 body, color and green flavor of the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture.
Butter
Carries fat and flavor into the roux.
Flour
Thickens the stock when cooked with butter as a roux.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the spinach and roux are combined with.

The step that matters

Cook the roux before adding the stock. Cooking flour in melted butter until it loses its raw taste lets it thicken smoothly; adding it raw or unevenly can leave lumps and a pasty flavor.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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