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Spinach Soup

A soup made from spinach purée, stock, milk, butter, flour, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 the spinach and remove the stalks.

  2. Place the spinach in a saucepan with just enough water to cover the bottom to prevent burning.

  3. Cook until tender, then drain and rub through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan, sprinkle in the flour, and cook for 2 to 3 minutes.

  2. Add the spinach purée and stock gradually, stirring continuously.

  3. Bring to a boil, then add the milk and simmer for a few minutes.

  4. Season with pepper and salt to taste, then 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 + 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 main body and green flavour of the soup once puréed.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted at the start of the roux.
Flour
Cooked with the butter to form a roux that thickens the soup.
White stock
Forms the liquid base that the spinach purée is thinned with.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softens the soup's flavour when simmered in at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the stock gradually while stirring. Whisking liquid into the hot butter and flour roux a little at a time keeps it smooth. Adding it all at once lets the starch clump into lumps that are hard to remove.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

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