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Sorrel Soup

A soup made from young sorrel leaves, butter, stock, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Sorrel Soup

Why it works: Sorrel and butter work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 652 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sorrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Pick the sorrel leaves from the stalks, wash, and drain them.

  2. In a stew-pan over low heat, melt the butter and add the sorrel until softened.

  3. Drain the sorrel over a sieve for 2 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Return the drained sorrel to the stew-pan with a small bit of butter and ½ pint of second stock.

  2. Reduce the mixture to half.

  3. Add another ½ pint and a few tablespoons of plain meat stock.

  4. Boil together.

  5. Pass the mixture through a sieve.

  6. Add 1 quart of stock.

  7. Gently boil for 2 hours before serving.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat together the eggs.

  2. Mix the beaten eggs into the soup just before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + meattop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,594 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sorrel + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together307 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Meat + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel leaves
Provides the main tart, green flavour and the bulk of the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the sorrel flavour as it softens.
Eggs
Thicken the soup gently when stirred in off the heat and add richness.
Second stock
Forms the liquid base that is reduced to concentrate the flavour.

The step that matters

Mixing the beaten eggs into the soup. Eggs scramble if the soup is too hot or boiling when they go in. Adding them just before serving, off the boil, lets them thicken smoothly into the liquid instead of curdling.

Swap the sorrel

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, meat, egg. 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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