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Soups, Broths, Purges

A savory soup made with butter, herbs, sorrel leaves, ham, stock, flour, and cream, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Soups, Broths, Purges

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter over medium heat in a pot.

  2. Add the herbs, sorrel leaves, sugar, coarse sea salt, black pepper, lemon juice, and diced ham.

  3. Cook gently for 10 minutes.

  4. Add the stock or water.

  5. Cook until everything is tender.

  6. Remove the herbs.

  7. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing the ham and vegetables through.

Thicken and finish

  1. Return the stock to the pot.

  2. Mix the flour with the cream or milk until smooth.

  3. Stir the mixture into the stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Strain the stock again.

  5. Mix the strained stock with the vegetables.

  6. Season to taste.

  7. Reheat gently.

  8. Serve with fried bread on the side.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sorrel + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted fat that carries the flavours of the herbs and sorrel into the soup.
Sorrel leaves
Provide the soup's sharp, lemony flavour and green colour.
Ham
Adds savoury, salty meat flavour to the stock.
Flour
Thickens the cream or milk mixture so the soup becomes smooth and body-rich.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a softer, creamier texture to the soup.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture through a fine sieve, pressing the ham and vegetables through. Pressing the cooked solids through a fine sieve breaks them down so the soup becomes smooth. Leaving them whole gives a coarser texture and a less even body.

“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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