Skip to main content
Main

Menu for a Dinner of Six

A savory soup of sorrel, lettuce, onion, and gravy served over mashed potatoes and garnished with watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sorrel and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Menu for a Dinner of Six

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a light saucepan.

  2. Add the finely shredded onion and cook until pale yellow.

  3. Stir in the chopped sorrel and lettuce until they change color.

  4. Pour in the thickened gravy and mix well.

  5. Add the sugar, salt, and black pepper.

  6. Boil for 5 minutes, then adjust thickness with more gravy if needed.

  7. Reduce heat and let the mixture simmer for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Prepare a circle of mashed potatoes and fill it with the hot puree.

  2. Arrange grilled cutlets around the potato circle and garnish with watercress.

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 + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Sorrel + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sorrel + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lettuce + potatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together322 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel
Adds a sharp, lemony acidity that gives the soup its characteristic tang.
Lettuce
Softens into the puree, adding body and a mild green flavor.
Onion
Builds a sweet, savory base as it cooks gently in butter.
Butter
Carries the onion's flavor and adds richness to the soup.
Gravy
Provides the liquid and savory depth, thickened further with flour.

The step that matters

Simmering after the sorrel and lettuce go in. Sorrel loses its bright color and turns dull when overcooked, and the long simmer can reduce its fresh tang. Keeping the heat low and the time controlled helps preserve both flavor and appearance.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sorrel, lettuce, flour, sugar, pepper, potato):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sorrel, lettuce, flour, sugar, pepper, potato. 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.

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes