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Sorrel with Poached Eggs

A dish of sautéed sorrel served with poached eggs and a liquid glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Sorrel with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Pick, wash, and drain enough sorrel to make a dish.

  2. In a saucepan, melt 2 tablespoons of butter over medium heat.

  3. Add the sorrel and stir until wilted, then strain through a wire sieve.

Make the sorrel purée

  1. Return the strained sorrel to the saucepan with another tablespoon of butter. Season with salt and pepper, sprinkle with flour, and moisten with brown sauce.

  2. Simmer for 15 minutes, then stir in the egg yolks one at a time until well mixed.

Serve

  1. Plate the sorrel and top with trimmed poached eggs. Garnish with fleurons and drizzle with liquid glaze before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Provides the main tart, green flavour and bulk of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the sorrel wilt and cook smoothly.
Flour
Thickens the sorrel mixture so it holds together rather than running.
Brown sauce
Moistens the sorrel and adds savoury depth to the base.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sorrel mixture as they set gently with heat.
Poached eggs
Provide the soft, runny yolk that enriches the dish when cut.

The step that matters

Stirring in the egg yolks. Adding yolks to a hot mixture can scramble them. Stirring them in one at a time, off the heat or at low heat, keeps the mixture smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the sorrel

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, flour, sauce, 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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