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Sorrel with Cream

A creamy vegetable dish made with sorrel, lettuce, beet leaves, chervil, butter, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sorrel with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Wash the sorrel leaves in cold water and drain them.

  2. Chop the sorrel, lettuce, beet leaves, and chervil finely.

Cook

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low heat.

  2. Add the chopped greens and stir until the butter is melted.

  3. Season with salt and pepper, and cook until well combined.

  4. In a bowl, mix the cream with the egg yolks.

  5. Add the cream mixture to the saucepan and stir until heated through.

  6. Serve hot.

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 + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Lettuce + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  5. Chervil + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together867 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel leaves
Provides the sharp, lemony acidity that defines the dish.
Butter
Carries flavour and gives the greens a smooth, rich coating.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and moisture, mellowing the greens into a silky texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream gently with heat, giving body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream mixture to the saucepan. Egg yolks set when heated, so the mixture should be stirred over gentle heat only until warmed through. Too much heat can scramble the yolks and leave the sauce grainy.

Swap the lettuce

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, chervil, butter, pepper, cream, egg. 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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