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Cream of Sorrel

A creamy soup made from sorrel, butter, béchamel, broth, cream, and egg yolks, served with bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Steam the sorrel with the butter for 10 minutes.

  2. Rub the cooked sorrel through a sieve into a saucepan.

  3. Add the béchamel sauce and white broth to the saucepan.

  4. Season with salt and pepper, then let it boil for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Thicken the soup with the cream and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Serve with slices of bread or toast.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Sorrel + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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
Adds fat and richness while the sorrel steams.
Béchamel sauce
Adds body and a creamy base to the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, rich texture when heated gently.
Cream
Adds richness and softens the sorrel's sharpness.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with the cream and beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, so if the soup is too hot when they are added they can curdle and turn grainy. Adding them gradually and keeping the soup below boiling keeps it smooth.

Swap the sorrel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce, pepper, cream, egg, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce, pepper, cream, egg, bread. 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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