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Spinach Soup

A soup made from boiled spinach, stock, milk, butter, flour, and seasonings.

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 and pick over the spinach, then cook it in boiling water with ⅛ teaspoon of baking soda for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain, chop, and rub the spinach through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Combine the spinach with the cooking water and bring to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix the butter and flour together to form a paste, then add it to the boiling mixture to thicken.

  3. Stir in the milk, bring to a boil again, and season with salt, pepper, and powdered sugar to taste.

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 + 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. Milk + flourtop 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
Forms the body of the soup and provides its green color and earthy flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and gives a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Combined with butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
Milk
Adds creaminess, softness and mild sweetness to the soup.
Baking soda
Added to the cooking water to help the spinach keep its bright green color.

The step that matters

Mixing the butter and flour paste into the boiling mixture. Flour lumps if added raw to hot liquid; mixing it with butter first coats the starch grains so they disperse and thicken smoothly rather than clumping.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

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