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Spinach Soup

A creamy spinach soup made with milk, butter, flour, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 spinach

  1. Wash the spinach and cook it without adding water, using the moisture on the leaves.

  2. Add salt and sliced onion, and cook until tender.

  3. Mash the cooked spinach through a strainer or puree sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, then stir in the flour until blended.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the hot milk and cook for 10 minutes.

  4. Stir in the spinach pulp and the egg yolk diluted with cream.

  5. Cook for an additional 10 minutes and season with salt and pepper.

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

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

  3. Spinach + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,336 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the main body and green flavour of the soup as its pulp.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the flour thickens into a smooth soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich base when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted with the flour.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the soup slightly when stirred in diluted with cream.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, helping the egg yolk blend in.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when heated, so if the soup is too hot when the diluted yolk goes in, it can curdle or turn grainy. Diluting it with cream first and adding it gradually helps keep the texture smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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