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Sorrel Soup

A soup made from sorrel, onion, butter, flour, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and stock or water.

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

Why it works: Sorrel and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 89 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sorrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Wash the sorrel thoroughly and drain it.

  2. Place the sorrel in a stew-pan and stir with a wooden spoon until it dissolves, about 2-3 minutes.

  3. Drain the sorrel on a sieve until the water has run off.

Make the soup

  1. Chop the onion and fry it in butter without browning.

  2. Add flour, sugar, nutmeg, pepper, and salt to the onion.

  3. Incorporate the sorrel and a small amount of stock or water, then rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

  4. Serve 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.

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. Sorrel + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel
Breaks down into the main body and tart, green flavour of the soup.
Butter
Fat that cooks the onion gently and carries flavour through the soup.
Flour
Lightly thickens the soup so it has a smooth, body-rich texture.
Onion
Provides a savoury base that is softened in butter without browning.

The step that matters

Frying the onion without browning. Browning the onion in butter adds bitter, caramelised notes that would clash with the sharp sorrel. Cooking it gently softens it and keeps the soup's flavour clean and bright.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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