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Soubrics of Spinach
Remove the stalks and discard all stale leaves from three quarts fresh spinach, thoroughly wash in plenty cold water, drain on a sieve, then plunge into three quarts boiling water with a tablespoon salt and boil for ten minutes. Place them on a sieve, press out all water with a skimmer, then finely chop and place in a sautoire; add one ounce grated Parmesan cheese, two egg yolks, half teaspoon salt, two saltspoons cayenne and one saltspoon grated nutmeg, place pan on fire, sharply stir with spatula for eight minutes or until thoroughly dry, then set pan on corner of range. Thoroughly heat one and a half tablespoons melted butter in large frying pan, take up a tablespoon of the spinach and drop it in the butter. Rapidly continue operation until finished, then cook spinach for two minutes on each side, or until a light brown colour, lift up, drain on cloth, dress on dish, pour cream sauce over and serve.
Subrics (the book spells them soubrics) are small spinach cakes dropped from a spoon into hot butter. The whole thing hinges on the drying stage: if the chopped spinach still holds water, the cakes spread and fall apart in the pan.
- Dry the mixture properlyAfter pressing the blanched spinach, the eight minutes of stirring over heat is not optional padding — it drives off moisture and sets the yolks enough to bind. Stop when the mass pulls away from the pan in a single mound and leaves the spatula clean.
- Ten minutes is too long a boilModern spinach, especially bagged leaf, is tender in 1 to 2 minutes of boiling water. Ten minutes was written for tougher, older market spinach and will leave you with a grey, flat-tasting purée.
- Quantity of spinachThree quarts of loosely packed leaves is roughly a pound by weight, which cooks down to something like a cup of squeezed, chopped spinach. A 10 oz package of frozen chopped spinach, thawed and wrung hard in a towel, is in the same ballpark.
- SaltspoonsA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon. Two saltspoons of cayenne is therefore a full 1/2 teaspoon — assertively hot for a cup of spinach. Start with a quarter of that and adjust; the nutmeg at 1/4 teaspoon is fine as written.
- Sautoire and "corner of the range"A sautoire is a shallow straight-sided sauté pan. Setting it on the corner of a coal range means holding it barely warm off direct heat — the low burner or a warm spot on the stovetop.
- More butter than statedA tablespoon and a half will not carry a pan of cakes. Use enough to film the pan generously, 3 to 4 tablespoons, and add more between batches; clarified butter or butter with a little neutral oil resists browning at the temperature these need.
- FryingMedium-high heat, cakes flattened slightly with the back of the spoon, and no crowding. Two minutes a side gives the light brown the recipe asks for; turn once only, with a thin spatula.
- Cream sauce'Cream sauce' in books of this period is generally a white sauce enriched with cream, and the book will have its own version in its sauce chapter. A plain white sauce made with half milk, half cream, seasoned lightly, is what is wanted — thin enough to pour, not to coat.
- YieldA tablespoon per cake from about a cup of mixture gives somewhere in the region of a dozen cakes, serving three or four as a vegetable course or light supper dish.
Subrics belong to the old French repertoire of small fried cakes bound with egg and cheese — spinach is the classic version, though the same treatment was given to rice, semolina and calf's brains. The name is generally traced to sur brique, "on the brick," from the tradition that they were once cooked on a hot brick or tile at the edge of the hearth rather than in a pan; that etymology is repeated in the nineteenth-century French manuals but is not firmly documented. Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, wrote the sort of book in which a French vegetable garnish sits comfortably alongside dishes from all over, and his instructions still assume a range with hot and cool zones — hence the pan set on its corner.