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Boiled Spinach
2 pounds spinach
3 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper
Remove roots and wilted leaves of the spinach. Wash in several waters, until all trace of sand has disappeared. Place in a large kettle without additional water; the water which clings to the leaves is sufficient. Cover the kettle and cook until the spinach is tender. The time of cooking depends on the age of the spinach. Long cooking darkens it. Salt the water just before cooking is completed. When done, drain, chop, season with salt, pepper and butter. One tablespoon lemon-juice may be added while chopping, if desired. Garnish with slices of hard-cooked eggs if desired.
A sound method that needs almost no translation: spinach steamed in its own washing water, then chopped and buttered. A few notes on quantities and timing.
- The hinge: keep it brief"Long cooking darkens it" is the whole lesson. Mature bunched spinach needs 3-5 minutes covered, baby leaves closer to 1-2; pull it the moment the stems collapse. Beyond that the chlorophyll turns olive and the flavour goes flat and metallic.
- Two pounds is not muchSpinach loses most of its bulk in the pot; two pounds of untrimmed bunched spinach cooks down to roughly two cups, enough for four as a side. Bagged prewashed leaves are sold in 5-10 oz sacks and are already trimmed, so somewhat less weight will do -- reckon on two or three of the larger bags.
- Washing still mattersBunched spinach carries real grit. Lift the leaves out of the water rather than pouring the whole lot into a colander, or the sand goes back on. Prewashed bagged spinach can be used straight from the packet, in which case rinse it briefly anyway so there is water clinging to the leaves for steam.
- The kettle"Kettle" here means a large lidded pot, not a tea kettle. Use the widest heavy pan you have with a tight lid; the leaves need room to be turned once or twice as the bottom layer wilts.
- Salting at the endThe recipe salts near the end of cooking rather than at the start, and seasons again with salt, pepper and butter after draining. Follow it as written; no reason is given for the late salting.
- Draining and choppingPress the spinach against a sieve or squeeze it in a clean towel; wet spinach will not take butter. Chop it on the board, adding the optional lemon juice as it goes, as directed.
- Butter and acidThree tablespoons for two pounds is generous by modern habit; stir it into the drained, chopped spinach as the recipe directs. The optional lemon juice is worth adding -- it lifts the mineral edge of the leaf.
- Hard-cooked eggsThe recipe offers sliced hard-cooked egg over the top as an optional garnish; a couple of eggs is ample for the quantity here.
Cooking spinach in nothing but the water clinging to its leaves is a familiar English and American treatment. Butterick, a pattern company, published cookbooks for much the same readership that bought its dress patterns. Spinach was in this period valued as much for its supposed iron content as its flavour -- a reputation that was widespread, though the popular idea that the figure came from a misplaced decimal point is itself better treated as a story about the story than as documented fact.