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Sorrel Soup

A savory soup of veal, mutton, fowl, and sorrel, seasoned with herbs, pepper, salt, and cloves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Sorrel Soup

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Sorrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Make a good gravy with the veal and mutton.

  2. Season the gravy with sweet herbs, pepper, salt, and cloves.

  3. Stew the meat until tender.

  4. Strain the soup and let it cool.

  5. Remove the fat from the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Place the soup in a stewpan with the trussed fowl.

  2. Wash and chop the sorrel.

  3. Fry the sorrel in butter.

  4. Add the fried sorrel to the soup.

  5. Stew until the fowl is cooked through.

  6. Skim the soup.

  7. Serve the soup with the fowl.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + sorreltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together88 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + sorreltop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Veal + muttontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,394 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-nonanal (fatty, waxy).

  5. Sorrel + buttertop 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
Gives the soup its characteristic sharp, sour flavour.
Veal knuckle
Releases collagen and savoury flavour into the gravy as it stews.
Mutton
Adds rich, meaty body and flavour to the stock.
Young fowl
Cooks in the soup, adding tender meat and flavour to the broth.
Butter
Softens the sorrel when fried and adds richness to the soup.

The step that matters

Removing the fat from the soup. Fat left on the cooled stock floats and turns the soup greasy. Chilling and skimming it off before adding the sorrel and fowl gives a clean, light broth.

Swap the sorrel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, mutton, pepper, clove, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Sorrelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, mutton, pepper, clove, 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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