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Spinach Soup

Spinach Soup made with spinach, stock, butter, flour, cream, and seasonings.

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 nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Wash and pick the spinach.

  2. Add the spinach to a pan of boiling water with a little sugar, salt, and baking soda.

  3. Boil quickly for 10 minutes or until tender.

  4. Drain the spinach.

  5. Rub the drained spinach through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a pot.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the stock.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes.

  5. Pour the mixture over the spinach.

  6. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cream.

Reheat and serve

  1. Reheat the soup.

  2. Serve.

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 + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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 main body and green flavour of the soup.
Butter
Fat that carries flavour and starts the thickening base.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a smooth base that gives the soup body.
Stock
Savoury liquid that thins the roux into the soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, silkier mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour until smooth. Flour must be stirred evenly into the melted butter so it cooks into a smooth roux. Lumps stay if it clumps, and the roux thickens the soup evenly only when it is fully blended before the stock goes in.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Arrowrootfits about as well
  2. Spinachthe original
  3. Sweet potatofits about as well
  4. Leekfits about as well

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