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Spinach, French Mode of Dressing
Prepare the spinach exactly as in SPINACH WITH GRAVY. When it has been boiled, drained, soaked in cold water, squeezed dry, and chopped small, dissolve two ounces of fresh butter in a saucepan, and stir the spinach in it over the fire till it is hot and dry. Add to it gradually two or three spoonfuls of boiling cream. Add a dessert-spoonful of powdered sugar and a little salt, and stir the mixture over the fire till the moisture is absorbed; then serve the spinach very hot. Garnish the dish with fried sippets, or freshly-baked pieces of puff-paste cut into fancy shapes. Time, ten minutes to boil the spinach. Probable cost, spinach, 3d. to 6d. per pound.
A classic épinards à la crème, from the era when spinach was boiled hard, wrung out and then rebuilt with butter and cream. The method still works; the timings and the vagueness about quantity need attention.
- Start with far more spinach than seems reasonableThe original leans on a cross-reference and never states a weight. For four people, plan on 2 to 2½ lb of untrimmed spinach, which cooks down to roughly 1½ cups once squeezed. The 2 oz butter and few spoonfuls of cream given here suit about that much.
- Ten minutes is for old, coarse leavesTen minutes suits older, coarser leaves -- Victorian spinach was often sold in mature bunches with thick stems, though the recipe itself says nothing about the leaves. Modern bagged or baby spinach wilts in a well-salted boil in 1 to 2 minutes. Boiling it ten minutes will leave you with khaki pulp.
- The cold-water plunge is the pointDropping the drained spinach into cold water stops the cooking and fixes the colour. Do not skip it, and squeeze genuinely dry afterwards — a ball of spinach holds a surprising amount of water, and any left behind will thin the cream and lengthen the final stirring.
- Dry it in the butter before the cream goes inThis is the hinge. The spinach must be hot and visibly dry in the melted butter before the cream is added, or the finished dish weeps on the plate. Add the cream in stages and let each addition be absorbed.
- Boiling creamHeating the cream separately keeps the pan temperature up so the mixture reduces rather than stews. Double or heavy cream; the original's 'two or three spoonfuls' most likely means tablespoons.
- A dessert-spoonfulTwo teaspoons. Use ordinary caster or granulated sugar rather than modern confectioners' sugar, which is cut with cornflour. The sugar is there to lift the mineral edge of the spinach, not to sweeten it.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of bread fried in butter until crisp, the older English equivalent of the crouton (the word long predates the Victorians). Cut them thin and fry them at the last minute so they are still crackling when the dish reaches the table.
- ServingServes four as a side. Best made last and served straight away: the recipe itself says to serve it very hot, and the colour dulls on standing.
Cassell's gives several separate spinach entries -- spinach with gravy, spinach the French way -- a habit typical of late-Victorian household dictionaries, which sorted dishes by sauce and style. The French treatment here is essentially épinards à la crème, a preparation familiar in English kitchens partly through the professional French cooks who worked in grand houses and wrote the manuals that popular compilers drew on. The pinch of sugar startles modern readers but was common in French vegetable cookery. The costing of threepence to sixpence a pound places spinach as a cheap green.