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Cream of Spinach Soup

A soup made from spinach, milk, flour, butter, salt, white pepper, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream of Spinach Soup

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach thoroughly, removing each leaf from the mid-rib.

  2. Place the leaves in a double boiler with the baking soda and cook for 1 hour or until tender. Do not add water to the inner vessel.

  3. Once the spinach is soft, rub it through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter, then mix the flour into the melted butter to make a roux.

  2. Add the milk to the roux, then add the pulped spinach to the roux.

  3. Season with salt and white pepper.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Spinach + milktop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together914 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the body and green colour of the soup once cooked and pulped.
Milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy richness of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth body when cooked with butter as a roux.
Butter
Carries the flour in the roux and adds fat for a rich mouthfeel.
Baking soda
Helps the spinach keep a bright green colour during long cooking.

The step that matters

Cooking the spinach in the double boiler. Spinach cooked for a long time can lose its colour and turn dull. Keeping the heat gentle in the double boiler and cooking only until tender helps protect the green colour and a smooth texture.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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