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Sorrel for Winter Use

A winter dish of finely chopped sorrel, ham, onion, and stock, finished with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 459 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sorrel for Winter Use

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Pick fresh sorrel from the stalks and wash it thoroughly in several waters to remove grit.

  2. Chop the sorrel very finely and squeeze out excess water.

Cook

  1. In a stewpan, melt a bit of butter and add the chopped ham and onion.

  2. Cook until the onion is soft, then add the sorrel and stock.

  3. Simmer until the mixture is quite dry.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a deep dish and cover with hot clarified butter.

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 + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together459 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + hamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Ham + oniontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,159 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh sorrel
Forms the main body of the dish and gives it a sharp, lemony flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when melted into the pan and used to seal the top.
Lean ham
Adds savoury, meaty flavour to the sorrel.
Onion
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth as it softens in the butter.
Stock
Adds savoury liquid that is cooked off as the mixture reduces.

The step that matters

Simmer until the mixture is quite dry. Sorrel releases a lot of water as it cooks. If excess liquid is left in, the mixture stays loose and watery rather than thick and concentrated. Reducing it fully concentrates the flavour and gives a firm texture.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Sorrelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, ham, onion. 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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