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Ckeam of Spinach

A creamy spinach soup made with milk, onion, potato, butter, flour, and seasoned with pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Ckeam of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine spinach pulp, milk, grated onion, and strained potato in a double boiler.

  2. Boil for three minutes before thickening.

  3. Mix flour with butter until smooth in a separate bowl, then add to the soup.

Season and serve

  1. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and grated nutmeg.

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.

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. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Spinach + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Spinach + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together646 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach pulp
Provides the main flavour and green colour of the soup.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and gives the soup a creamy, smooth body.
Potato
Adds starch and body, helping the soup feel thicker and smoother.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a velvety consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and butter mixture. Flour clumps if added straight to hot liquid. Mixing it smooth with butter first lets it disperse evenly, so the soup thickens without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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