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Sorrel

A creamy sorrel soup made with butter, flour, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 231 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Clean the sorrel and break off the ends.

  2. Wash the sorrel in plenty of water.

  3. Strain the sorrel.

Cook the sorrel

  1. Combine the sorrel, salt, and water in a 4-quart saucepan.

  2. Boil for 15 minutes, stirring constantly.

  3. Strain through a fine sieve.

  4. Chop the sorrel like spinach.

Make the butter base

  1. Melt the butter with a little flour in a 2-quart saucepan.

  2. Stir for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the chopped sorrel.

  4. Cook for 20 minutes.

  5. Add enough broth to keep it moist.

Finish with eggs

  1. Beat the eggs with a little milk in a bowl.

  2. Add the egg mixture to the sorrel.

  3. Stir briskly for 5 minutes.

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 + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel
Provides the main leafy body and the sharp, lemony flavour of the soup.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Flour
Cooked with the butter, it thickens the soup by absorbing liquid.
Eggs
Heated in the soup, they set and thicken it while adding richness.
Milk
Thins the beaten eggs so they blend smoothly into the soup.

The step that matters

Adding the egg mixture to the sorrel. Egg proteins set when hot, so they can curdle into lumps if they meet heat unevenly. Stirring briskly for five minutes disperses the egg evenly, giving a smooth, thickened soup instead of scrambled bits.

Swap the sorrel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, egg, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Sorrelthe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, egg, milk. 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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