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Brabant Broth

A clear broth with spinach, sorrel, and a creamy egg yolk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 204 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Brabant Broth

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Combine 2 quarts of white stock, shredded spinach, and sorrel leaves in a clean three-quart saucepan.

  2. Let the mixture stew until the greens are tender, adding pepper, salt, and sugar.

Finish and serve

  1. Beat together the cream or milk with the egg yolks in a bowl.

  2. Just before serving, mix the egg and cream mixture into the soup.

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. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Sorrel + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

White stock
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries its flavor.
Spinach
Provides the main green body and tender texture once stewed.
Egg yolks
Enrich the soup and thicken it slightly when stirred in without boiling.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the broth.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, acidic, lemony flavor that brightens the greens.

The step that matters

Adding the egg and cream mixture. If the soup is boiling when the egg yolks go in, they can scramble and curdle instead of thickening it smoothly. Stir them in just before serving, off the boil, and keep the soup hot but not bubbling.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Spinachthe original
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Chivefits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, pepper, sugar, 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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