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Soup

Cream of Spinach

A creamy spinach soup made with butter, nutmeg, stock, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Cream of Spinach

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 ↓

Cream of Spinach

Ingredients

Directions

Make the spinach base

  1. Pick, wash, and boil spinach until it yields 1 pint cooked, then chop and pound into a soft paste.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the spinach paste, 4 ounces butter, nutmeg, and salt; cook and stir for 10 minutes.

Add stock and finish

  1. Add 2 quarts strong stock and bring to a boil, then strain the mixture.

  2. Return the strained mixture to the heat, and just before boiling, mix in 1 tablespoon butter and 1 teaspoon sugar.

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. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

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

Nutmeg and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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 flavour and bulk, and is softened into a smooth paste by boiling and pounding.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the spinach and stock.
Strong stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the other flavours.
Granulated sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the savoury spinach and salt.

The step that matters

Adding butter and sugar just before boiling. Once the soup reaches a boil, emulsified butter can separate and turn greasy, and the sugar can scorch on the base. Stirring them in just below the boil keeps the texture smooth and the flavour balanced.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Sweet potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, 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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