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Cream of Spinach Soup

A warm spinach soup thickened with butter and flour, finished with milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cream of 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 ↓

Cream of Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the spinach

  1. Combine boiling water and spinach in a pot. Cook for 30 minutes.

  2. Rub the cooked spinach through a sieve.

  3. Add stock to the spinach puree and heat.

Thicken and finish

  1. Mix butter and flour in a separate bowl to form a paste.

  2. Add the paste to the soup to thicken.

  3. Season with salt and pepper.

  4. Stir in milk, bring to a boil, and serve immediately.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main body, color and green flavor of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and forms the base of the thickening paste.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a paste.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness to the finished soup.
Stock
Adds savory depth and liquid to the spinach puree.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour paste. Flour must be cooked in fat and whisked into the hot soup so it thickens smoothly without lumps. Adding it cold or unmixed can cause clumping, and the starch needs heat to swell and thicken the liquid.

Swap the spinach

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

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

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