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Cream of Spinach Soup

A creamy soup made from spinach, onion, milk, flour, butter, celery salt, and pepper.

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

Why it works: Celery and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 16,012 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cream of Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash the spinach and place it in a dry kettle.

  2. Add ½ cup water and toss over the fire for 5 minutes.

  3. Cover the kettle and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

  4. Drain the spinach, saving the water.

  5. Chop the spinach finely and press it through a sieve.

  6. Return the spinach to the kettle with the reserved water.

Make the soup

  1. Add grated onion, milk, flour rubbed with butter, celery salt, and pepper.

  2. Stir constantly until the soup reaches boiling point.

  3. Strain the soup again through a sieve 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. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Spinach + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together616 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

  5. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 color of the soup once pressed through a sieve.
Milk
Makes up the liquid base and gives the soup its creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and helps bind the flour so it thickens smoothly.

The step that matters

Adding the flour rubbed with butter. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump. Rubbing it with butter coats the grains so they disperse, and constant stirring keeps the starch from settling and scorching as the soup thickens.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

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