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German Mode of Cooking Spinach
"Spinach," says the compiler of "German National Cookery," "requires to lie in water a little while, and to be several times rinsed in fresh water. Put it into boiling water with salt; give it eight or ten minutes' gentle boiling uncovered. If its earthy flavor is objected to, throw it into plenty of cold water when boiled enough, then drain, and press it dry; chop it fine. Make butter hot, throw it into some grated bread crumbs, then add the spinach. Or make a thick butter-sauce, and stir the spinach into this to get thoroughly hot. Serve garnished with either cutlets, sausages, hard-boiled eggs sliced, and sippets of buttered toast, or poached eggs. If the full flavor of the spinach is liked, simply wash it well, clear it of the large stems, and drain it. Put a piece of butter in a saucepan, and when melted put in the spinach; cover, and as it shrinks put in more. Let it cook in its own juice. Sprinkle salt over as you put it in."
Two methods sit side by side here: a blanch-and-chop purée in the German style, and a butter braise for people who want the leaf to taste of itself. Both are workable; only the boiling time needs a hand.
- The boiling timeEight to ten minutes was aimed at coarse, mature, thick-stemmed spinach. Modern bunched or bagged spinach collapses in 60 to 90 seconds in boiling salted water, and baby leaf needs only 30 seconds. Boil it for ten minutes and you get grey mush.
- Why uncoveredLeaving the lid off lets volatile acids escape and keeps the green bright. This is sound and worth keeping, whatever the timing.
- "Earthy flavor"The compiler does not say what he means, but the likeliest reading is the metallic, chalky edge associated with oxalic acid, generally higher in older leaves. Blanching, shocking in cold water and squeezing hard does reduce it. Skip that step and you keep both the mineral bite and the deeper flavour.
- Butter-sauceIn a book of this date a "thick butter-sauce" most likely means a flour-thickened sauce enriched with butter rather than melted butter alone. On the order of one to two tablespoons each of butter and flour to a cup of milk or stock, cooked out, then the chopped spinach folded in.
- SippetsSmall triangles or fingers of buttered toast, cut to fringe the edge of the dish. They serve the same purpose as croutons.
- Pan materialCook spinach in stainless steel, enamel or glass. Bare cast iron or unlined aluminium reacts with the leaf's acids and turns the dish drab and faintly metallic.
- QuantitySpinach loses about nine tenths of its bulk. Allow 1 1/2 to 2 lb of raw leaf for four people as a side dish, more if you are pressing it dry for the chopped version.
- The butter braiseThe second method is the better one for good young spinach. Adding the leaves in batches as each shrinks is the whole trick: too much at once and it stews in released water rather than butter. Salt each layer as it goes in, and pour off any pooled liquid before serving.
Spinach cooked down, chopped fine and served with eggs or sausage is one of the fixed points of nineteenth-century German home cooking, where Spinat mit Ei or with Bratwurst was a spring standard. The reliance on breadcrumbs fried in butter as a binder and a garnish of poached or sliced hard-boiled egg is characteristic of the German household manuals of the period, among the best known of which was Henriette Davidis's cookbook, translated and excerpted in English-language collections through the second half of the century; nothing here connects this particular passage to it. The source is credited only as "German National Cookery." The double method is telling: one version for cooks who want spinach smoothed into a sauce, one for those who want it tasting of the garden.