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Sorrel Sauce

A sauce made from garden sorrel, water, egg yolk, butter, browned flour, salt, and red pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the browned flour and blend well.

  3. Add the chopped sorrel and heat until smoking hot.

  4. Pour in the boiling water and cook for 3 minutes.

  5. Season with salt and red pepper.

  6. Slowly add the egg yolk, beating the sauce vigorously while adding.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sorrel + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together652 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

Garden sorrel
Provides the main leafy, tangy flavor that defines the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce as it is beaten in.
Browned flour
Thickens the sauce and adds a toasted, nutty flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavor through the sauce.

The step that matters

Slowly add the egg yolk while beating. Adding the yolk slowly while beating vigorously keeps it dispersed in the hot liquid, so it thickens smoothly instead of scrambling into lumps.

Swap the sorrel

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

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

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