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Spinach
Ingredients.
Two pounds of Spinach.
Two ounces of Butter.
Half a gill of Cream.
The book gives the ingredients only, in the shorthand of a professional kitchen where the method for a spinach purée was assumed knowledge. The proportions are the useful part: two pounds of leaf to two ounces of butter and a scant quarter-cup of cream.
- Half a gillAn imperial gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, or 5 fl oz, so half a gill is 2.5 fl oz — a shade over a quarter-cup. American gills are 4 fl oz, which would make it 2 fl oz; either falls in the same range for this dish.
- Two pounds is not muchMature spinach loses roughly nine-tenths of its bulk. Two pounds of raw leaf cooks down to about a cup and a half of purée, enough for four as a side.
- The implied methodThis is the standard épinards à la crème treatment: blanch the leaves in well-salted boiling water for a minute or two, refresh in cold water, then squeeze dry — hard, in a cloth — before chopping or passing through a sieve.
- The hingeEverything depends on how thoroughly the spinach is wrung out. Water left in the leaf thins the butter and cream into a grey puddle and no amount of further cooking will recover it.
- FinishingMelt the butter in a wide pan, add the dry chopped spinach and toss over moderate heat until hot through, then stir in the cream off the heat. A minute or two at most; long reheating dulls the colour to olive.
- SeasoningThe list omits salt, pepper and nutmeg. Nutmeg with spinach is a long-standing convention in this style of cookery, and salt and pepper are plainly assumed.
- Baby spinachBagged baby leaf needs no blanching and little trimming, but it is wetter and milder than the mature bunched spinach the book assumes. Wilt it dry in the pan first, then drain, before the butter goes in.
Spinach dressed with butter and cream was a familiar dish of the late Victorian and Edwardian repertoire, appearing on menus as épinards à la crème and used as a garnish for veal, eggs and poached fish as well as served alone. Ingredient lists of this clipped kind assume the reader already knows the sequence — blanch, refresh, press, sieve, reheat — and need only the proportions. Sieving the leaf to a smooth green purée is associated with French-influenced kitchens, while rough-chopped spinach served in a mound with butter was the plainer English treatment.