Name: Herb Juice
Ingredients: equal parts of endive; watercress; lettuce; chervil; sorrel; white beet; 4 to 5 ounces of herb juice; 1 cup of veal or chicken broth; 1 spoonful of lime syrup (optional)

Why it works: Sorrel and lime share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 15 recipes mention both. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

Combine the herbs and vegetables in a mortar and pound into a fine paste.
Press out the juice from the paste.

Mix and serve

Mix 4 to 5 ounces of the juice with 1 cup of veal or chicken broth.
Add a spoonful of lime syrup if desired.
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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

Sorrel + limetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together15 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Chervil + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together247 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Watercress + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together29 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Endive + sorreltop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together60 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Endive + lettucetop 1% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together284 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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.

Flavor stand-ins for 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):

Lemonbetter flavor fit
Limethe original

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. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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.