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Spinach Soup

A soup made with spinach, meat stock, butter, pepper, salt, cream, and raw eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Spinach Soup

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 ↓

Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the soup

  1. Boil the desired amount of meat stock in a pot.

  2. Season the stock with vegetables of your choice.

  3. Boil the spinach, then prepare it with butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. Press the spinach through a sieve into the boiling stock.

  5. Add ½ cup of cream and let it boil briefly.

Serve

  1. For serving, drop a raw egg into the soup for each guest just before pouring into the tureen.

  2. Let the tureen sit over a kettle of boiling water for a minute or two before serving.

  3. When dishing, carefully scoop the soup with one egg in each plate, keeping the eggs unbroken.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Meat + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Provides the green colour, body and vegetable flavour that the soup is built on.
Raw eggs
Set gently in the hot soup, adding richness and a soft, tender texture to each serving.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel to the soup.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounded, savoury richness to the cooked spinach.
Meat stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the rest of the soup.

The step that matters

Drop the raw eggs into the soup. The egg must be dropped in just before pouring and kept in very hot liquid so it partly sets. Too cool a soup leaves the egg runny, and handling it roughly breaks it apart in the plate.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits about as well
  2. Asparagusfits about as well
  3. Spinachthe original
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

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