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Spinach Soup

A soup made from fresh spinach, onion, mace, flour, butter, cream, and water, served with fried bread.

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

  1. Wash the spinach thoroughly.

Make the soup

  1. Bring water to a rapid boil and add the spinach, onion, mace, pepper, and salt.

  2. Cook for a few minutes, then strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  3. Melt the butter in another saucepan, sprinkle in the flour and stir well.

  4. Add the cream and return the strained spinach mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Boil for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried slices of bread.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, green colour and vegetable flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the soup a smooth mouthfeel.
White flour
Thickens the soup when stirred into melted butter, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the flavour and texture of the soup.
Onion
Contributes savoury sweetness and aromatic depth to the cooking water.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the melted butter. Flour must be stirred well into the melted butter so it cooks evenly into a roux. Stirring thoroughly prevents lumps and lets the starch thicken the soup smoothly when the strained spinach is added.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

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