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Spinach Soup

Wash some freshly-gathered young spinach leaves. Shred finely as many as will fill a large basin, and put with them a lettuce, also finely shredded, and two or three leaves of sorrel. Throw them into boiling water, and let them boil quickly for five or six minutes. Drain them, put them into plenty of cold water to preserve the colour, and squeeze the moisture from them. Dissolve two ounces of butter in a saucepan. Mix it smoothly with a heaped table-spoonful of flour; add the vegetables gradually, and when they are roughly blended with the butter and flour, pour in, little by little, two quarts of boiling water or vegetable stock. Boil all gently together for a quarter of an hour. Put in, off the fire, a gill of boiling milk or cream, and pepper and salt, if required, and serve very hot. Time, about an hour.

SPINACH SOUP (a la Francaise). Make as much clear stock as will be needed, and put it boiling hot into the tureen. Have ready some spinach boiled in the usual way. Press this till quite dry, season with pepper and salt, and make it into balls the size of a walnut. Gently and carefully slip these into the golden-coloured stock. The contrasting colours in the soup will have a very good appearance.