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Soup

Sorrel Soup

A soup made from sorrel, onion, butter, flour, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and stock or water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Sorrel Soup

Why it works: Sorrel and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 89 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sorrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Wash the sorrel thoroughly and drain it.

  2. Place the sorrel in a stew-pan and stir with a wooden spoon until it dissolves, about 2-3 minutes.

  3. Drain the sorrel on a sieve until the water runs off.

Make the soup

  1. Chop the onion and fry it in butter without browning.

  2. Add flour, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to the onion.

  3. Incorporate the sorrel and a small amount of stock or water.

  4. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve and serve.

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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 sharp, acidic flavour that defines the soup and breaks down into a purée.
Butter
Fat that softens the onion and carries flavour without browning it.
Flour
Thickens the purée so the soup gains body and a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Fry the onion without browning. Browning gives the onion a sweet, toasted flavour that competes with the sorrel's sharpness. Gentle frying softens it while keeping the soup's bright, clean taste.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sorrel, butter, flour, sugar, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, butter, flour, sugar, nutmeg, pepper. 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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