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Sorrel Soup

A soup made with shredded sorrel, butter, milk, egg yolks, bread, and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Sorrel Soup

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sorrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Tear the tender green parts from the midribs of the sorrel.

  2. Wash the torn parts in cold water.

  3. Shred the washed parts very fine.

Cook the soup

  1. Melt half the butter in a stew pan.

  2. Add the shredded sorrel to the melted butter and cook for five minutes, stirring frequently.

  3. Add the boiling water and salt to the pan and boil the mixture for ten minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat the egg yolks well and mix in the milk.

  2. Pour the yolk-milk mixture into a soup tureen and add the remaining butter cut into bits.

  3. Gradually pour the boiling soup into the tureen, stirring continuously to combine with the egg yolk.

  4. Add the bread dice to the soup and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + sorreltop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel
Provides the sharp, lemony flavour that defines the soup.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup and give it a smooth, rich body when stirred in.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the soup.
Milk
Mellows the soup and adds creaminess when combined with the yolks.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling soup to the yolks. Pouring the hot soup in slowly while stirring constantly warms the yolks gradually. Dumping them in at once or letting the mixture overheat can scramble the egg and leave lumps instead of a smooth, thickened soup.

Swap the sorrel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, egg, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, egg, bread. 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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