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Common Sorrel Sauce

A sauce made from stewed sorrel, butter, pepper, salt, and optional gravy or milk, thickened with flour and finished with egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Common Sorrel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Strip the sorrel from the stalks and large fibers.

  2. Wash the stripped sorrel thoroughly.

Stew and chop

  1. Place the sorrel in a well-tinned or enamelled saucepan without water.

  2. Add the butter, pepper, and salt, then stew gently while stirring until very tender.

  3. Drain the sorrel on a sieve or press out the liquid.

  4. Chop the drained sorrel finely.

Finish the sauce

  1. Boil the chopped sorrel again for a few minutes with gravy, cream, or milk mixed with flour.

  2. If desired, stir in beaten egg yolks just before removing from heat.

  3. Add pounded sugar for sweetness.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Breaks down into a tender, tart green purée that forms the body of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the gravy, cream, or milk so the sauce coats the spoon.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and thicken it gently when stirred in off the heat.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the stewed sorrel.

The step that matters

Stirring in egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and curdle if they get too hot. Adding them just before removing the pan from the heat keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the sorrel

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, flour, egg, sugar. 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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