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Cream of Spinach Soup

A soup made from boiled spinach, milk, corn starch, nutmeg, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cream of 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 ↓

Cream of Spinach Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the spinach

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add the salt.

  2. Add the spinach and cook until tender, then drain and chop.

  3. Pass the chopped spinach through a coarse sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the milk in a separate pot.

  2. Stir the spinach into the boiled milk.

  3. Mix the corn starch with a little cold water and add it to the soup along with the nutmeg.

  4. Cook for five minutes and serve hot.

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 + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together157 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + nutmegtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together563 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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, color and vegetable flavor of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy base and adds richness and mild sweetness.
Corn starch
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.
Nutmeg
Adds a warm, aromatic spice note that complements the spinach and milk.

The step that matters

Adding the corn starch slurry. Corn starch must be mixed into cold water first so it disperses without lumps, then the soup must be cooked while it heats so the starch swells and thickens fully.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, corn, nutmeg. 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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