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Puree of Spinach
Pick, wash and boil a small dish of spinach; refresh it in cold water; free it entirely from all water by squeezing it; pound in a mortar; put into a saucepan with a ladleful of white sauce, little nutmeg, salt, and only a pinch of sugar; reduce the purée over a brisk fire to preserve its color; pass through a colander, then put into a stewpan just before using it to get warm, and add two spoonfuls fresh butter and a small piece of glaze.
A classic French-style spinach purée, written for a cook who already knows how to make a béchamel and keeps meat glaze on hand. The whole point of the method is colour: everything is arranged to keep the green bright.
- Squeeze it truly dryThis is the hinge. Spinach holds an enormous amount of water, and any left behind will thin the sauce and force a long reduction that turns the purée olive-drab. Press it in a towel until no more liquid comes out.
- "Refresh in cold water"Plunge the drained spinach straight into cold water. It halts carryover cooking, which helps hold the green; a dull result often comes from letting the spinach go on cooking in its own heat.
- Mortar and colanderA food processor does the pounding in seconds. "Pass through a colander" means a fine sieve or tamis pressed with a wooden pestle — a modern colander's holes are far too large.
- A ladleful of white sauceThe recipe gives no quantities at all: "a small dish of spinach" and "a ladleful" of sauce. As a starting guess, something like 1/2 cup of bechamel to a pound of raw spinach. Add it gradually; you want a thick paste, not soup.
- GlazeGlace de viande: veal or beef stock reduced to a syrup that sets firm when cold. Sold in tubs as glace; demi-glace is a different, thinner preparation but is often used as a stand-in, as is a teaspoon of concentrated stock paste. It is for savour, not thickening.
- "A brisk fire"High heat, stirring, so the reduction happens fast rather than over a long slow simmer, which is what greys spinach.
- Butter at the endThe two spoonfuls of fresh butter go in as the puree warms through in the stewpan, gently, so it emulsifies and glosses rather than splitting.
- YieldThe recipe says only "a small dish"; as a guide, a pound of fresh spinach handled this way serves two to three as a side. Note that the salt goes in with the white sauce at the start, before the reduction concentrates it, so go lightly and taste at the end.
Spinach puree of this kind belongs to the nineteenth-century French repertoire that English and American cookbooks drew on heavily — the sequence of blanch, refresh, squeeze, pound, sieve and finish with butter is the standard professional treatment, and the small piece of glaze at the end points to a kitchen that kept reduced stock to hand. The pinch of sugar and the grating of nutmeg are equally conventional: nutmeg with spinach and with white sauce is a pairing generally traced to medieval and early modern European cookery. That the book prints the method without explaining what a glaze is, or what quantity a ladleful means, says a good deal about who was expected to be reading it — someone with either professional training or a cook to hand.