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Spinach (Perhaps no other vegetable)
Perhaps no other vegetable requires such care in the preparation as spinach. In the first place it takes a great deal of time, water and patience to wash it clean. Cut off the roots; break the leaves apart; drop them in a large pan of water; rinse well; lift them out separately and drop back into a second pan of water. Continue washing in fresh waters until there is not a grain of sand to be found in the bottom of the pan. Drain the spinach and drop it into boiling water, allowing one pint of water and one tablespoon of salt to a half peck of spinach. Let it simmer for twenty minutes or more, counting from the time it begins to boil, and drawing the cover of the saucepan to one side to allow the steam to escape. Empty into a colander; pour cold water over the spinach; drain and mince fine. Return to the fire with seasoning and butter, or drippings from roast beef or chicken if preferred. Garnish with hard-boiled egg or serve with cream sauce.
A complete method for boiled spinach in the pre-war style, where greens were cooked long and then chopped or sieved. The washing advice still holds; the timing does not.
- Cut the cooking timeTwenty minutes of simmering turns spinach olive-drab and flat-tasting. Leaves wilt in two to three minutes in the pan; stemmy mature spinach may want five. Judge by the moment the leaves collapse, not the clock.
- Half a peckA peck is eight dry quarts, so half a peck is four quarts of loose uncompressed leaves — very roughly a pound to a pound and a half trimmed. Because the measure is by volume and leaves pack differently, treat it as approximate.
- A pint of water is steaming, not boilingOne pint under that quantity of leaves means the spinach cooks mostly in its own moisture. Modern practice does the same thing with even less: wet leaves in a covered pan over high heat need no added water at all.
- The saltA tablespoon of salt to a pint of water is a heavily salted cooking liquid for so little water, though the recipe does drain the spinach and rinse it under cold water afterwards. Salt lightly at the start and correct after draining.
- Why the lid is pulled asideVenting the pan is held to let volatile acids escape and so keep the green from dulling to grey. It is one bit of period technique here worth keeping.
- Cold water and squeezingShocking under cold water stops the cooking and sets the colour. Press the drained spinach firmly in the colander or in a towel; wet spinach will thin any cream sauce added later.
- SandBunched spinach from a market still needs the repeated-basin treatment described here — lift the leaves out of the water rather than pouring the water off, so the grit stays behind. Prewashed bagged leaf spinach needs a single rinse.
- Fat and finishBeef or chicken drippings give the dish its period character; butter is the neutral choice. Minced fine with butter and cream sauce, this is essentially creamed spinach.
- YieldA pound and a half of raw spinach cooks down to roughly a cup and a half to two cups — about four modest side servings.
Spinach reached European kitchens from Persia by way of the Arab Mediterranean, and by the nineteenth century it was firmly a spring vegetable of the market garden, sold in bunches or by the peck with the field soil still on it — which is why a book like this opens not with cooking but with three changes of water. The instruction to mince it fine and return it to the pan with butter or meat drippings is in line with the French-influenced treatment of greens taught in American cookery schools: épinards à la crème, cooked soft, chopped or sieved, enriched, and garnished with hard-boiled egg. Vegetable entries of this kind were often written as general lessons on handling rather than as fixed recipes, which is what this page is.