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SPINACH, BOILED (common English method)
Take three pounds of spinach, young and freshly-gathered. Pick away the stalks, wash the leaves in several waters, lift them out with the hands that the sand or grit may remain at the bottom, and drain them on a sieve. Put them into a saucepan with a good sprinkling of salt and the water which clings to the leaves, and let them boil until tender. Take the spinach up, drain it, and press it well; chop it small, and put it into a clean saucepan with a little pepper and salt and a slice of fresh butter. Stir it well for five minutes. Serve on a hot dish, and garnish with fried sippets. Time to boil the spinach, ten to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 3d. to 6d. per pound. Sufficient for five or six persons.
A straightforward Victorian vegetable dish, and the only real adjustments are to the boiling time and to the volume of raw leaf involved.
- Cook it far lessTen to fifteen minutes turns spinach grey-brown and flat-tasting. Young leaves wilt in the water clinging to them in two to three minutes, tossed over a high heat; older, coarser leaves may want five. Take it off as soon as it collapses and the colour is still bright.
- Three pounds is rightThe quantity looks absurd until you have washed it. Spinach collapses to a small fraction of its raw volume, and 3 lb of leaf cooks down to roughly a pound — genuinely enough for five or six as a side dish.
- No added waterThe instruction to use only the water clinging to the leaves is the hinge of the method. Adding water leaches out flavour and colour and leaves a wet, dull purée. Cover the pan for the first minute to build steam.
- The washing mattersLifting the leaves out of the water rather than pouring the lot into a colander is not fussiness — grit sinks, and tipping it back over the leaves defeats the point. Bagged, pre-washed spinach can skip this; anything bunched or from a garden cannot.
- Press it hardAfter draining, squeeze the spinach firmly between two plates or in a clean cloth. Water left in will thin the butter and make the finished dish slack. Chop only after pressing.
- SippetsSmall triangles or dice of bread fried in butter or dripping until crisp — the Victorian equivalent of croûtons. Cut them from a firm white loaf and fry just before serving so they stay brittle.
- Salt and oxalic tangSpinach is naturally sharp from oxalic acid, which the butter and the second seasoning at the end will soften. A squeeze of lemon or a scrape of nutmeg at the last moment is period-appropriate and steadies the flavour.
- Cost"3d. to 6d. per pound" is threepence to sixpence in pre-decimal British currency, a note for the household budget rather than the cook.
The title "common English method" distinguishes this from the French treatment, in which the cooked and pressed leaves are worked with butter and cream into a richer purée. The English version keeps the vegetable plainer: boiled, chopped, buttered, and edged with fried bread. Spinach reached western Europe by way of Arab Spain and had been established in English gardens for centuries by the time this book appeared; it was valued as an early green, sown in succession so that "young and freshly-gathered" leaves could be had over a long season. The insistence on freshness in the first line is not decorative — spinach wilts quickly, and in a period before refrigeration the difference between garden and market was tasted directly.