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Puree of Sorrel

A smooth sorrel puree made with butter, veal stock, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Puree of Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sorrel thoroughly and remove the stems, keeping only the leaves.

  2. In a saucepan, combine ½ pint of water and 1 teaspoon of salt, then add the sorrel.

  3. Boil uncovered for 10 minutes.

  4. Drain and chop the sorrel very finely.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the chopped sorrel to the saucepan, add the butter and veal stock, and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Bring to a boil once and serve with breaded veal cutlet or veal fricandeau.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Veal + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,049 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + vealtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel
Provides the main body of the puree and its sharp, lemony tang and bright green colour.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky texture to the puree.
Veal stock
Adds savoury depth and body to the sorrel.

The step that matters

Boil the sorrel for only 10 minutes, uncovered. Sorrel is delicate and turns dull, olive-brown when overcooked, so timing matters. Boiling uncovered lets volatile acids escape and keeps the green colour and sharpness brighter.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Sagefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sorrelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, veal, 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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