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Stove or Spinach Soup

A soup made with boiled spinach, onions, butter, flour, cream, and optional peas.

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

Stove or Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Pick and clean the spinach, then parboil it.

  2. Place the spinach in a colander to drain the bitter water, running cold water over it for 1-2 minutes, then press out the excess water.

Make the soup

  1. Boil 2 quarts of water with 3 sliced onions.

  2. Knead 2 ounces of fresh butter with 1.5 tablespoons of flour, then mix it with the spinach.

  3. Add the spinach mixture to the boiling water and onions, and cook for 15 minutes.

  4. Stir in ½ pint of cream or good milk, salt, and pepper, and boil for an additional 15 minutes.

  5. For added flavor, you can include 1 quart of green peas during the cooking process.

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  2. Spinach + peastop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together550 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Onion + spinachtop 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 body of the soup and gives it its green colour and vegetable flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the soup a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Kneaded with butter to thicken the soup as it simmers.
Cream or milk
Adds creaminess and softens the flavour, rounding out the soup.
Onions
Build savoury, sweet aromatic flavour in the cooking water.

The step that matters

Drain and press the parboiled spinach. Spinach holds bitter, oxalic-rich water and excess moisture. Draining and pressing removes the bitterness and extra water, so the soup tastes milder and thickens as intended.

Swap the peas

The recipe marks peas as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, spinach, butter, flour, cream, pepper):

  1. Cashew nutfits better
  2. Lentilsfits better
  3. Chickpeafits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, spinach, butter, flour, 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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