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Cream of Spinach Soup

A soup made from fresh spinach, stock, onion, celery, and cream, seasoned with salt, pepper, and bay leaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cream of Spinach Soup

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick the leaves from the spinach, wash thoroughly, and place in a dry kettle.

  2. Stand over the fire and stir constantly until the spinach wilts.

  3. Cover the kettle and cook until the spinach is soft.

  4. Drain the spinach, saving the water, and rub it through a sieve.

  5. Return the spinach to the saved water.

Make the soup

  1. Add the soup stock, seasoned with salt, pepper, bay leaf, onion, and celery, and strain.

  2. Mix in a little cornstarch moistened in cold water.

  3. Cook all together for about 30 minutes.

  4. Rub through a sieve again and reheat.

Finish and serve

  1. Just before serving, add the heavy cream.

  2. Serve with croutons.

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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the body and green colour of the soup once cooked and sieved.
Soup stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour for the soup.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture at the end.
Cornstarch
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it body.
Onion
Adds aromatic savour to the stock.

The step that matters

Adding the heavy cream just before serving. Cream that boils for long can separate or turn grainy and lose its fresh richness. Adding it at the end and only reheating keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Lettucefits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, celery, pepper, cream. 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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