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Sorrel for Garnishing Meat

A sauce made from boiled sorrel, butter, flour, stock, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 for Garnishing Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Pick and wash the sorrel in several waters, then drain it thoroughly.

  2. Place the sorrel in a saucepan with salt and boiling water.

  3. Boil quickly until tender, stirring occasionally.

  4. Drain the sorrel well and chop it finely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, work the flour into the butter and stir over heat for 3 minutes.

  2. Add the chopped sorrel and gradually stir in the strong stock.

  3. Cook for 20 minutes.

  4. Beat the eggs with the milk and quickly stir into the sorrel mixture.

  5. Cook for an additional 4-5 minutes 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.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel
Provides the main sour, green flavour and bulk of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in the roux base.
Eggs
Enrich and thicken the sauce as they gently set with heat.
Strong stock
Supplies savoury depth and liquid to form the sauce body.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg and milk into the sorrel mixture. Eggs set when heated, so if the sauce is too hot or boiling vigorously when they are added, they can curdle and turn grainy. Adding them quickly and stirring keeps the mixture smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the sorrel

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, milk. 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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