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Sorrel Soup

A soup made from fresh sorrel, butter, flour, broth, milk, cream, egg, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Sorrel Soup

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Pick, wash, and squeeze dry the sorrel, then cut it into strips.

Make the soup

  1. Heat the butter in a saucepan, add the sorrel, cover, and steam for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  2. Rub in the flour, then add the broth or water and milk.

  3. Season with salt, sugar, and pepper; mix and let simmer for 20 minutes.

  4. Add the cream beaten with the egg white; boil for 1 minute.

  5. Beat the yolk with the milk and stir it in, cooking for 5 minutes longer.

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 + 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sorrel + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 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
Provides the tart, lemony flavour that defines the soup.
Butter
Fat that softens the sorrel and carries flavour during steaming.
Flour
Thickens the broth into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup.
Cream
Adds richness and a softer, rounder texture to the finished soup.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the soup as it cooks gently at the end.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk and cream. Egg proteins set and can curdle if the soup boils hard after the yolk goes in. Keep the heat gentle so the soup stays smooth and thickened.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Sorrelthe original
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, sugar, pepper, cream, 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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