Spinach Soup
4 cups White Stock II or III 2 quarts spinach 3 cups boiling water 2 cups milk 1/4 cup butter 1/3 cup flour Salt Pepper Wash, pick over, and cook spinach thirty minutes in boiling water to which has been added one-fourth teaspoon powdered sugar and one-eighth teaspoon of soda; drain, chop, and rub through sieve; add stock, heat to boiling-point, bind, and milk, and season with salt and pepper.
A cream-of-spinach soup built on the standard trio of stock, thickening roux and milk. Two things in it belong firmly to 1900: the half-hour boil and the pinch of soda.
- The hinge: don't boil it for thirty minutesSpinach is fully tender in two to four minutes in boiling water, and it is going to be sieved anyway. Thirty minutes gives a dull olive purée with a flat, sulphurous edge; blanch briefly, then drain and press through a sieve or blitz it.
- The sodaAn eighth teaspoon of baking soda was added to hold the green colour by keeping the cooking water alkaline. It works, but it softens the leaf to mush and destroys most of the vitamin C. Leave it out and cook the spinach fast and uncovered instead.
- "Bind"This means the butter and flour listed above: melt the quarter cup of butter, stir in the third of a cup of flour, cook a minute or two without colouring, and whisk it into the hot stock and spinach off the heat. The milk goes in after, and the soup should not be boiled hard once the milk is in.
- Two quarts of spinachA loose volume measure of raw leaves, not a weight. Reckon roughly 3/4 to 1 1/2 lb of untrimmed spinach depending on how tightly it is packed, or one to two large supermarket bunches. Bagged baby leaf needs no picking over and less washing.
- White Stock II or IIIA reference to the book's own stock chapter: a mild, pale veal or chicken stock. Any light chicken stock does, but taste for salt before you season the finished soup, since modern stock is often salted already.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term generally means finely ground white sugar rather than the cornstarch-cut confectioners' sugar sold today. A quarter teaspoon in the three cups of cooking water was probably meant to take the edge off tough, older spinach; ordinary granulated sugar is the closer match.
- Consistency and yieldThe flour is enough to thicken about two quarts of liquid to a light cream. It makes roughly six to eight servings; thin with more stock or milk if it sets too thick on standing, as flour-bound soups do.