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Cream Op Spinach Soup

A creamy soup made with butter, flour, milk, spinach pulp, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Op Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, blend the butter and flour together.

  2. Slowly add the cold milk while stirring until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

  3. Stir in the spinach pulp and heat through.

Serve

  1. Serve with a dollop of whipped cream on each plate.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Flour + spinachtop 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. Flour + milktop 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

Butter
Fat that combines with flour to form a roux, giving the soup a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Starch that thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy base when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Liquid base that, thickened by the roux, forms the creamy body of the soup.
Spinach pulp
Main vegetable that gives the soup its green color and earthy flavor.

The step that matters

Slowly add the cold milk while stirring. Adding cold liquid gradually while stirring keeps the flour from clumping, so the mixture becomes smooth rather than lumpy.

Swap the spinach

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, 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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