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French Herb Broth

A clear broth made from sorrel, cabbage lettuce, chervil, salt, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

French Herb Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil 1 quart of water.

  2. Wash and prepare 40 leaves of sorrel, 1 cabbage lettuce, and 10 sprigs of chervil.

Make the broth

  1. Add the herbs and 1 teaspoon of salt to the boiling water.

  2. Add ½ ounce of fresh butter and cover the saucepan.

  3. Simmer for a few minutes, then strain through a sieve or colander.

Serve

  1. Serve cold, or warm for sick individuals.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sorrel + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Sorrel + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sorrel
Adds a bright, sour flavour that gives the broth its acidity.
Cabbage lettuce
Contributes leafy body and mild, fresh flavour to the broth.
Chervil
Adds a delicate, aromatic herbal flavour.
Fresh butter
Adds fat and a rounder, richer mouthfeel to the broth.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sorrel, lettuce, chervil, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, lettuce, chervil, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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