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Sorrel Sauce for Roast Lamb or Fowls

A sauce made from sorrel leaves, butter, salt, white pepper, brown gravy or cream, and powdered sugar, served with roast lamb or fowls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sorrel Sauce for Roast Lamb or Fowls

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Wash and clean the sorrel leaves.

  2. Melt the butter in a stewpan and add the sorrel, salt, and white pepper.

  3. Stir over the heat for 20 minutes until tender.

  4. Pass the mixture through a sieve into a saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the brown gravy or cream and powdered sugar.

  2. Heat the sauce and serve it under the meat.

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

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel leaves
Provide the sour, lemony flavour and the bright green colour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Softens the sorrel and carries flavour, giving the sauce a rich, smooth body.
Brown gravy or cream
Adds body and richness, mellowing the sharpness of the sorrel.
Powdered sugar
Balances the acidity of the sorrel with a touch of sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir over the heat until tender. Sorrel is cooked gently in butter until it collapses. Overheating can dull its bright green colour and make the sauce taste bitter or dull, so keep the heat moderate and watch for softening.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, butter, cream, 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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