Recipe no. 380 from Jean-Baptiste Reboul's La Cuisinière provençale (1909), page 182.
Ingredients
- spinach
- water
- salt
- butter
- pepper
- nutmeg
- flour
- milk
- cream
Preparation
- PreparingSort and wash your spinach, blanch it for 10 minutes in salted water, drain it, refresh it and pass it through a fine sieve or chop it finely.
- CookingPut it into a saucepan in which you have melted an egg-sized piece of butter; stir it for a few minutes over the heat, season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
- SauceMeanwhile, put a walnut-sized piece of butter into a saucepan with a spoonful of flour, stir for a moment over the heat without letting it brown, moisten with boiling milk to obtain a smooth sauce that is not too thick; let it boil for a few minutes and mix it into the spinach, which you then let cook for about half an hour.
- VariationThis method is economical; if you want to make it richer, you can replace the sauce above with the thick cream known as double cream.
Reboul's text
Sort and wash your spinach, blanch it for 10 minutes in salted water, drain it, refresh it and pass it through a fine sieve or chop it finely; put it into a saucepan in which you have melted an egg-sized piece of butter; stir it for a few minutes over the heat, season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.
Meanwhile, put a walnut-sized piece of butter into a saucepan with a spoonful of flour, stir for a moment over the heat without letting it brown, moisten with boiling milk to obtain a smooth sauce that is not too thick; let it boil for a few minutes and mix it into the spinach, which you then let cook for about half an hour.
This method is economical; if you want to make it richer, you can replace the sauce above with the thick cream known as double cream.
Small Provençal glossary for this recipe
Reboul writes in French: no Provençal word appears in this recipe, apart from the dish's name itself. The table below gives the Provençal equivalents of the words used, in mistralian spelling, translated by Lingua Nostra. Each form is attested in our Provençal-English dictionary; click to open the entry.
| Provençal | English |
|---|---|
| blanqueja | to blanch |
| sedas | sieve |
| chapla | to chop |
| sausso | smooth sauce |
| crèmo | cream |
| la | milk |
| farino | flour |
| burre | butter |
| besuscla | to brown |
Source: Jean-Baptiste Reboul, La Cuisinière provençale, Marseille, 1909, recipe no. 380, page 182. Public domain. Transcription, formatting and Provençal glossary by Lingua Nostra.