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Sorrel-sauce

A sauce made from boiled sorrel leaves, butter, lemon juice, sugar, and brown gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 149 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sorrel-sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Wash the sorrel leaves thoroughly.

  2. Boil the leaves in salted water for about 5 minutes until tender.

  3. Drain the leaves and transfer them to cold water until cool.

  4. Drain again and mash through a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sorrel puree with butter, lemon juice, sugar, and enough brown gravy to achieve the desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve hot with roast or baked gosling.

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 + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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 leaves
Provides the sour, tangy flavour that defines the sauce and forms its green puree base.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy mouthfeel to the sorrel puree.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sorrel and balances the sugar and gravy.
Brown gravy
Supplies savoury body and liquid to thin the puree to the desired consistency.

The step that matters

Draining and cooling the leaves. Sorrel holds a lot of water after boiling. Draining it well and cooling it in cold water keeps the leaves green and stops them cooking further, so the puree is thick and not watery or dull.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Sorrelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, 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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