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Common Sorrel Sauce

A sauce made from fresh sorrel, butter, pepper, salt, and optional dairy, flour, egg yolks, or sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Common Sorrel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Wash the sorrel thoroughly and place it in a well-tinned or enamelled saucepan without any water.

  2. Add the butter, pepper, and salt, then stew gently while stirring until very tender to avoid burning.

  3. Drain the sorrel on a sieve or press out the liquid, then chop it as finely as possible.

  4. Boil the chopped sorrel again for a few minutes with gravy, cream, or milk mixed with flour, or just with a fresh slice of butter.

  5. Stir in the beaten egg yolks just before serving to soften the sauce, and add pounded sugar for extra flavor if desired.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Sorrel
Its acidity gives the sauce its tangy flavor and, once stewed, its soft, smooth body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor and giving the sauce a smooth mouthfeel.
Gravy, cream, or milk
Adds liquid and body, thinning the chopped sorrel into a smoother, creamier sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the sauce as they gently set with heat, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Stewing the sorrel gently. Sorrel breaks down into a dark, bitter mass if it scorches, so it should be stewed gently while stirring until very tender.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Sorrelthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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