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Common Sorrel Sauce

A sauce made from boiled sorrel, butter, salt, pepper, and optional thickening with flour, milk, or egg yolks.

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 ↓

Common Sorrel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Wash the sorrel thoroughly.

  2. Place it in a well-tinned saucepan without any water.

  3. Add a small slice of butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Stew gently while stirring until tender.

  5. Drain the sorrel on a sieve or press out the liquid.

  6. Chop it finely.

Finish the sauce

  1. Boil the chopped sorrel again for a few minutes with gravy, cream, or milk mixed with flour, or just with more butter.

  2. Stir in beaten egg yolks just before serving to soften the sauce.

  3. Add sugar for extra flavor if desired.

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

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 sharp, acidic flavor that defines the sauce and breaks down into a soft purée when stewed.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sorrel.
Gravy, cream, or milk
Adds liquid and body, thickening the sauce when combined with flour.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce holds together rather than running thin.
Egg yolks
Enrich and soften the sauce, adding richness and a smoother texture when stirred in.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated, so if the sauce is boiling when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Adding them just before serving, off the boil, keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the sorrel

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

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

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