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Sobbel-sauce

A sauce made from field-sorrel, butter, salt, pepper, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and pepper work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 419 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sobbel-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Thoroughly wash the sorrel.

Cook the sorrel

  1. Place the sorrel in a saucepan with the water remaining after washing and 1 tablespoon of butter for each pint of sorrel.

  2. Cover and cook until the sorrel is tender enough to mash with a fork.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and pepper, then add enough butter to make the sauce semi-liquid.

  2. Serve the sauce with lamb.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sorrel + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together158 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 sour, lemony flavour and the leafy body that cooks down into the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the sauce a smooth, silky mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Cooking until tender enough to mash. Sorrel collapses quickly and can turn dull or stringy if overcooked. Cooking covered until it just breaks down with a fork keeps the sauce bright and smooth.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Sorrelthe original

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