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Spinach Soup

A soup made with fresh spinach, butter, flour, and chicken broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Spinach Soup

Why it works: Spinach and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the stalks from the spinach leaves and wash and chop the spinach.

Cook

  1. In a 3-quart stewpan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped spinach and stir for 5 minutes.

  3. Stir in the flour and cook for another 3-4 minutes.

  4. Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil.

  5. Reduce heat and simmer slowly for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve as is or strain according 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 + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Spinach + chickentop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,146 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + chickentop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,902 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Spinach + buttertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,583 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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
Provides the main body of flavor and color, and wilts down to a soft texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor while the spinach cooks.
Flour
Thickens the broth by binding with the melted butter to form a roux.
Chicken broth
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the other flavors.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Cooking the flour in butter for a few minutes removes its raw taste and lets it thicken the liquid smoothly when the broth is added. Stopping too early can leave a pasty or floury flavor.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, chicken. 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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