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Spinach - Green (for Colouring various Dishes)
INGREDIENTS.- 2 handfuls of spinach.
Pick and wash the spinach tree from dirt, and pound the leaves in a mortar to extract the juice; then press it through a hair sieve, and put the juice into a small stewpan or jar. Place this in a bain marie, or saucepan of boiling water, and let it set.
Watch it closely, as it should not boil; and as soon as it is done, lay it in a sieve, so that all the water may drain from it, and the green will then be ready for colouring.
If made according to this recipe, the spinach-green will be found far superior to that boiled in the ordinary way.
Spinach Pudding. (Italian Recipe.) -INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-2 lbs. of spinach, 6 oz. of veal forcemeat, 1/24 pint of Béchamel, 1/4 pint of stock, 2 oz. of butter, 3 eggs, 2 potatoes, 1 turnip, 1 carrot, pepper and salt. AVERAGE COST, 2s.
Having washed the spinach thoroughly, boil, drain, chop and set it to cool, after which put it in a saucepan with the stock, sauce and butter, and simmer for 5 minutes.
When again cool, add the forcemeat, the yolks of eggs and a seasoning of salt and pepper, then put it into a mould and cook SPONGE CAKE. for hour in a bain marie. The vegetables must meanwhile be boiled, cut into SPINACH PUDDING. shapes and glazed, and with these the pudding, when turned out, should be garnished.
TIME.-Altogether, to cook about hour.
SEASONABLE from November to July.
Spinach Soup. (French Recipe.) -INGREDIENTS for soup for 8 persons. -As much spinach as, when boiled, will half fill a vegetable dish, 2 quarts of very clear medium stock. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 6d.
Make the cooked spinach into balls the size of an egg, and slip them into the souptureen. This is a very elegant soup, the green of the spinach forming a pretty contrast to the brown gravy.
TIME.-1 hour.
SEASONABLE from October to June.
Three related items sit together here: a spinach colouring paste, a moulded spinach pudding and a clear soup garnished with spinach balls. The colouring is the technique worth learning, and everything hinges on keeping it below a simmer.
- The hinge: never let it boilRaw spinach juice is set by gentle heat, well below boiling, which coagulates the leaf protein and traps the chlorophyll in a bright green curd. A boil turns that curd grey-olive and coarse, which is exactly the fault the recipe is written to avoid.
- Bain marieA heatproof bowl or jar standing in a pan of water held just off the boil. Modern equivalent: a double boiler with the water barely trembling.
- Extracting the juiceA mortar and a hair sieve can be replaced by a blender or food processor and a fine nylon sieve or muslin. Two handfuls of spinach, perhaps 8 oz, yields only a tablespoon or two of drained green, enough to tint a small batch of sauce, butter or icing.
- Using the greenStir it into cold or warm mixtures at the end. Reheating the finished colouring hard undoes the point of making it carefully.
- Veal forcemeatA seasoned minced-veal panada, bound with egg and breadcrumbs. Butchers rarely sell it ready-made now; minced veal, or minced chicken or pork, worked with breadcrumbs soaked in milk and an egg gives the same body in the pudding.
- Bechamel quantityThe figure printed for the Bechamel in the pudding (1/24 pint) looks like a misprint. Judge by feel: enough sauce to make the chopped spinach hold together loosely before the eggs go in, perhaps a quarter of a pint.
- Pudding timing and temperatureThe cooking time for the moulded pudding has lost its fraction, so the intended figure cannot be recovered; something between half an hour and an hour suits a 2 lb spinach and forcemeat mould set in a water bath, until a skewer comes out clean and the centre reaches 160F. Let it stand ten minutes before turning out.
- The soupAs printed, the two quarts of clear stock never appear in the method. Poach the spinach balls separately, put them in the tureen, and pour the hot consomme over at the table so the green stays distinct against the brown.
- Costs and seasonsThe prices in shillings and pence are late-Victorian or Edwardian retail and have no modern meaning. The seasonable notes reflect the English kitchen-garden year before air freight; spinach is now available all year.
Vegetable colourings were standard equipment in the Victorian and Edwardian professional kitchen, where a cook was expected to produce green butters, green mayonnaise, tinted forcemeats and pale green ices without recourse to anything but the garden. The French term for this preparation is vert d'epinards, and Beeton's method - pounding raw leaves, straining the juice, then setting it gently over water - is the classical one, said to be distinguished from simply chopping boiled spinach in that it spares the chlorophyll the prolonged heat that dulls it. The two Italian and French recipes printed alongside show the other face of spinach in this book: not a plain boiled vegetable but a structural ingredient, moulded with forcemeat or shaped into balls to give colour and form to a made dish. The habit fell away as bottled colourings became cheap, though restaurant kitchens revived the same principle later in the twentieth century for green herb oils and pastes.