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Spinach, Martha
Trim off the stalks of three quarts of fresh spinach, discarding the stale leaves if any. Thoroughly wash and rapidly drain, plunge them in a gallon of boiling water with a tablespoon salt and boil for ten minutes. Take them up with a skimmer, drain on a sieve, press out all the water, and chop very finely, then place them in a saucepan. Cut three slices of sandwich bread in one-third-inch square pieces and place on a plate, pour over them a tablespoon of vinegar, then brown them in a small frying pan with a tablespoon melted butter to a good golden colour and add them to the spinach, with two hard-boiled eggs cut into eight pieces each, half an ounce butter, a half teaspoon salt, half teaspoon sugar, one saltspoon grated nutmeg and a half gill cream. Mix well with a wooden spoon and cook for ten minutes, lightly mixing once in a while, dress on a vegetable dish and serve.
A creamed spinach dressed with vinegar-soaked croutons and hard-boiled egg. Two things in the original need adjusting for modern palates: the length of the boil and the vagueness of the spinach measure.
- Three quarts of spinachLeaf vegetables were sold and measured loose by volume. Three quarts of untrimmed leaves is roughly a pound as bought, rather less once the stalks are off, cooking down to something like a cup and a half chopped. Bagged baby spinach needs no stalk trimming at all.
- The ten-minute boilSpinach is fully cooked in 60 to 90 seconds in heavily salted boiling water. Ten minutes gives you grey, sulphurous leaves and pours most of the flavour down the sink. Blanch briefly, shock in cold water if you want the colour held, then squeeze hard — the squeezing step in the original is the one worth keeping.
- Half a gill of creamA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is 4 tablespoons. Use heavy cream; anything lighter will break over the second cooking.
- A saltspoonA quarter teaspoon. Freshly grated nutmeg at that quantity is assertive against a pound of spinach, which is the intention here.
- Sandwich breadAt this period the term means a close-crumbed white pan loaf. Day-old bread cubes hold their shape; fresh soft sliced bread will collapse into the vinegar. A tablespoon of vinegar over three slices is a light sprinkling, not a soak.
- The croutons go in lastThe original adds them before the final ten minutes, which will soften them badly. Fold them in during the last minute or two, along with the egg, so the pieces stay whole.
- The second cookingTen minutes of further cooking presumably serves to reduce the cream and settle the seasoning. With properly blanched spinach, three or four minutes over moderate heat is enough.
- YieldServes four as a side dish.
Spinach dressed with butter, cream, nutmeg and croutons is squarely in the French repertoire — épinards à la crème with croûtons — and chopped or quartered hard-boiled egg is often added as a garnish, turning a plain purée into a composed dish. Names like "Martha" attached to vegetable preparations in turn-of-the-century international cookbooks are generally decorative rather than documentary. The vinegar poured over the bread before frying is the interesting touch, and an old one — a sharp note to cut cream and butter. The instruction to discard stale leaves and wash thoroughly reflects a time when spinach arrived from the market gritty and unwashed.