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Spinach, with Gravy
Take three pounds of spinach. Pick the leaves from the stalks and wash them well in several waters, drain them, throw them into a saucepan with plenty of slightly salted boiling water, and let them boil for five minutes. Press the spinach, and throw it into cold water for half an hour to preserve the colour. Take it out of the water a little at a time, make it into small balls to press the moisture thoroughly from it, spread it on a dish, pick out any stalks or straws that may have been inadvertently left in it, and chop it small. Mix an ounce of butter with an ounce of flour smoothly in a saucepan, add a pinch of salt, and stir the mixture over the fire for three minutes. Put in the spinach, and stir it for five minutes. Pour in a quarter of a pint of stock, and when this is thoroughly blended with the vegetable, add, a little at a time, half a pint more: stir the spinach again for five minutes. Lift it from the fire, stir into it till dissolved an ounce of fresh butter, and serve very hot. Garnish the dish with triangular pieces of toasted crumb of bread half an inch thick. Spinach when thus dressed will constitute an enjoyable accompaniment to veal or boiled mutton. With roast meat it is best when served plain. Time, altogether, about an hour. Probable cost of spinach, 3d. to 6d. per pound. Sufficient for six or eight persons.
A Victorian creamed spinach, built on a white roux rather than cream. The method is sound; only the units and one long soak need translating.
- Imperial liquid measuresA quarter of a pint here is 5 fl oz (an imperial gill), and the further half pint is 10 fl oz — 15 fl oz of stock in total, or a little under two US cups. US pints are smaller, so measuring by them would leave you roughly a fifth short of the book's quantity.
- Quantity of spinachThree pounds of untrimmed leaf collapses to roughly a pound of cooked spinach, perhaps 2 cups once chopped and squeezed. Depending on bag size that is anywhere from four or five of the larger supermarket bags to twice that many of the small ones. Mature bunched spinach with stalks to pick out is closer to what the book means than baby leaf.
- The half-hour cold soakPlunging into cold water stops the cooking, which is what keeps the green from dulling further; but thirty minutes is far longer than needed and leaches flavour along with the colour. A few minutes in iced water does the same job.
- Squeeze harder than feels reasonableThe balls of spinach pressed by hand are the hinge of the dish. Any water left behind thins the sauce and no amount of later stirring will recover it. Wring it in a tea towel if you like.
- The roux must not colourThree minutes over the fire is to cook out the raw flour taste, not to brown it. Keep the heat moderate; a blond or brown roux would muddy both colour and flavour.
- ChoppingChop by hand for the texture the book intends — a food processor turns squeezed spinach into a paste in seconds, which is a different dish entirely.
- StockVeal or light chicken stock suits the pairings suggested. A well-flavoured vegetable stock works; anything strongly reduced or heavily salted will dominate, since the spinach itself is barely seasoned.
- The garnish"Crumb of bread" means the soft interior with the crust cut away, sliced half an inch thick and toasted, then cut into triangles — croutons, not modern sliced toast.
- YieldSix to eight as a side dish. The suggestion to serve it plain with roast meat and sauced with veal or boiled mutton reflects a period logic: the roast brings its own gravy, the boiled meat does not.
The sequence — blanch, refresh, press, then bind — parallels French practice, where épinards au velouté or à la crème were standard. What marks it as English and mid-Victorian is the thrift: the binding is butter, flour and stock rather than cream, and the recipe still quotes a price per pound, since spinach at 3d. to 6d. was a cheap way to put something green on the table in spring. Spinach itself is generally traced to Persia and reached western Europe by way of the Arab Mediterranean; by the nineteenth century it was grown in successive sowings for a long English season, which is why cookery books of the period give so many ways to serve it. The insistence on picking out stalks and straws is a reminder that this leaf arrived from the market gardener unwashed and unsorted, and that several changes of water were not a formality.