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Spinach a La Reine
1/2 tablespoon chopped onion 1/2 tablespoon butter 1 quart spinach 1 tablespoon flour 1 cup milk Salt and pepper 3 1/2 tablespoons grated cheese 3 eggs 6 cooked shrimps Cook the onion in the butter or butter substitute, add the spinach, which has been washed and chopped, and fry quickly. Add flour and milk, and cook until it thickens. Season with salt and pepper, add grated cheese, and when it starts to boil remove from the fire and add well-beaten egg-whites, then the beaten yolks, and bake in a very hot oven for ten minutes. Garnish with the shrimps.
This is a loose spinach souffl\ttled in a shallow dish rather than a mold, and it moves fast once the eggs go in. Everything else should be ready before you beat them.
- The hinge: fold, do not stirThe cheese sauce must be off the heat and no longer boiling before the eggs go anywhere near it, or the yolks will scramble and the whites will collapse. Fold gently and stop while streaks are still faintly visible.
- The odd order of the eggsAs written the whites go in before the yolks, which is the reverse of usual souffl\tpractice, in which the yolks are beaten into the warm base first and the whites folded in last.
- "A very hot oven"In period usage roughly 450-500F. Ten minutes at that heat suits a shallow, wide dish; a deeper dish will need longer and a lower heat, and will still be soft in the middle.
- A quart of spinachThe recipe does not say whether the quart is measured raw or after cooking, and the two differ enormously; a quart of raw chopped leaves is only a few ounces. Frozen chopped spinach works if thoroughly squeezed dry, since excess water will slacken the base.
- "Butter substitute"The phrase is a period commonplace, admitting margarine or shortening in butter's place. Butter is the better choice here and the quantity is trivial.
- The cheeseNo type is specified. Gruy\tre or a dry aged cheddar gives the flavor the dish needs; Parmesan alone is sharp but works. Three and a half tablespoons grated is about 1 oz.
- Dish and yieldButter a shallow gratin dish generously. This serves three as a light lunch or four as a first course, which is about what six shrimp will garnish.
- The shrimpListed among the ingredients but used only as a garnish, not cooked into the dish. Cooked and peeled, warmed briefly, arranged when the dish comes out of the oven.
The Delineator was Butterick's women's magazine, and its recipe collections leaned on a domesticated, teachable version of French cookery \tthe sort a home cook could attempt without a professional kitchen. "\tla reine" \tqueen's style \tis one of the looser classical names; in classical usage it most often indicates poultry, usually minced chicken in a cream or delicate white sauce, though the term was attached to a great many dishes without much consistency. Here it amounts to spinach bound in a cheese b\tchamel and lifted with beaten eggs, a shortcut souffl\tof a kind common in American magazine cookery. The instruction to use "butter or butter substitute" helps date the page.