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Stewed Sorrel

A savory stew of sorrel leaves, mushrooms, and ham simmered in butter and white broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mushroom and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Stewed Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash, drain, and chop the sorrel leaves very fine.

  2. Mince a few fresh mushrooms and a slice of raw ham.

Cook

  1. Braise the mushrooms and ham in a lump of butter for a few minutes.

  2. Add the chopped sorrel and moisten with a ladleful of white broth.

  3. Cover the pan and simmer for thirty minutes.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and white pepper.

  5. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve and heat it in a lump of butter.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot platter.

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. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  2. Sorrel + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together110 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Mushroom + hamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,486 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Sorrel + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel leaves
Provide the main body and tart, lemony flavor of the dish.
Fresh mushrooms
Add savory, earthy flavor and moisture as they soften in the butter.
Slice of raw ham
Contributes salty, savory depth to the braised base.
Butter
Carries flavor and gives the mixture richness and a smooth finish.
White broth
Adds moisture so the sorrel can stew into a tender mixture.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Sorrel and mushrooms hold a lot of water and fibre, so pressing them through a fine sieve breaks the cell structure and yields a smooth purée instead of a stringy or grainy texture.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sorrel, mushroom, ham, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, mushroom, ham, butter. 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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