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Spinach with Cream
Discard all wilted leaves, remove the roots and pick over and wash one-half peck of spinach in several waters, to rid it from all sand. If young and tender, put in a stew-pan and heat gradually; let boil twenty-five minutes, or until soft, in its own juices and the water that clung to the leaves. Old spinach should be cooked in boiling, salted water (it will require about two quarts of water to one peck spinach). Drain thoroughly, chop finely in a wooden bowl. Melt three tablespoons butter in an omelet pan; add spinach and cook four minutes, stirring constantly, sprinkle with one and one-half tablespoons flour, continue stirring and pour on gradually threefourths cup hot, thin cream; simmer five minutes.
A creamed spinach in the French manner, from a book that assumed you were buying greens loose by volume rather than in a bag. Two things need adjusting: the quantity, and the twenty-five-minute boil.
- Half a peck of spinachSpinach was sold by dry measure; a bushel ran about 20 lb, which puts a peck at roughly 5 lb and a half peck at 2.5-3 lb untrimmed. After stemming and cooking that collapses to a few cups chopped.
- Twenty-five minutes is for old spinachTwenty-five minutes -- The recipe gives this timing for young, tender spinach cooked in its own juices. Modern bagged spinach is picked young and wilts in the pan in 3-5 minutes, by which point it is fully soft. Twenty-five minutes turns it grey and dull-flavoured. Cook only until the leaves have collapsed and released their liquid.
- Coarse, mature spinachThe instruction to boil tough late-season spinach in salted water still holds if you find thick-stemmed bunches at a farmers' market; it softens the ribs and pulls out bitterness. Ratio of two quarts water to a peck of leaves is a light bath, not a flood.
- Wash in several watersTake this seriously with field-grown or bunched spinach. Sand settles rather than floats, so lift the leaves out of the water rather than pouring the water off them, and repeat until the bottom of the bowl is clean.
- Drain thoroughlyThis is the hinge of the dish. Wet spinach will thin the sauce past saving, so press it hard in a sieve or twist it in a towel before chopping.
- Chop finely in a wooden bowlA wooden bowl with a curved chopper was the period tool; a board and a knife or a few pulses in a food processor do the same job. Do not puree it, or you lose the texture the butter and flour are there to carry.
- Omelet panSimply a shallow, wide, heavy skillet. Any 9-10 inch saute pan works; the width helps evaporate residual moisture in the four minutes of stirring.
- Thin creamLight cream, about 18-20% fat, or half-and-half. Heavy cream will make the dish claggy against only a tablespoon and a half of flour.
- Seasoning and yieldNo salt, pepper or nutmeg is specified; season at the end, as spinach needs more salt than most vegetables. Serves four to six as a side.
Creamed spinach in this form -- boiled, chopped, then finished with butter, flour and cream -- is the American household version of the French epinards a la creme, and it was a common feature of English-language cookbooks of the late nineteenth century. 52 Sunday Dinners (1913) runs as weekly Sunday dinners through the year. The recipe's careful distinction between young spinach, cooked in nothing but the water clinging to its leaves, and old spinach, which needs a proper boil, reflects a time when produce arrived seasonal and variable rather than uniform, and the cook was expected to judge the ingredient before choosing the method. The wooden chopping bowl it calls for was standard equipment; the same tool did hash, mincemeat and herbs.