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Drink

Herb Juice

A drink made by crushing herbs and vegetables, mixed with broth, and optionally sweetened with lime syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and sorrel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 60 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Herb Juice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Combine the herbs and vegetables in a mortar and pound into a fine paste.

  2. Press out the juice from the paste.

Mix and serve

  1. Mix 4 to 5 ounces of the juice with 1 cup of veal or chicken broth.

  2. Add a spoonful of lime syrup if desired.

  3. Drink this mixture before breakfast.

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. Endive + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Watercress + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Chervil + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Watercress + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together59 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Endive + watercresstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together45 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Endive
Adds fresh, slightly bitter leafy flavour to the juice.
Watercress
Contributes peppery, fresh leafy flavour and a green base.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, lemony acidity to the juice.
Veal or chicken broth
Forms the liquid base that carries the herb juice and adds savoury body.

Swap the lime

The recipe marks lime as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (endive, watercress, lettuce, chervil, sorrel, veal, syrup):

  1. Limethe original
  2. Lemonfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, watercress, lettuce, chervil, sorrel, veal, syrup. 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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