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Cream of Spinach with Stock

A creamy spinach soup made with stock, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Cream of Spinach with Stock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Chop and pound the spinach into a soft paste.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the spinach paste, butter, and salt.

  3. Cook and stir for 15 minutes.

Add the liquid and finish

  1. Add the stock and boiling water.

  2. Bring to a boil, then strain the mixture.

  3. Return the strained mixture to the heat.

  4. When boiling, add the butter and sugar.

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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Spinach + sugartop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,033 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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, flavor and green color of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel and carries flavor.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that thins the spinach into a soup.
Sugar
Adds a small amount of sweetness to balance the spinach's earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Cook and stir the spinach paste for 15 minutes. The thick paste sticks and scorches easily on the base of the pan. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and keeps the spinach from burning, which would give the soup a bitter, burnt taste.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar. 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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