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Puree of Sorrel

A smooth puree made from boiled sorrel, onions, butter, flour, spices, and sauce, finished with butter and glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Puree of Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Wash the sorrel in several waters and drain it.

  2. Place the sorrel in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly until it melts and boils for a few minutes.

  3. Transfer the sorrel to a fine sieve to drain excess water.

Make the puree

  1. Slice the onions thinly and fry them in a saucepan with butter until lightly colored.

  2. Add flour, nutmeg, sugar, pepper, and salt to the onions, then moisten with sauce.

  3. Incorporate the drained sorrel and reduce the mixture over high heat, stirring continuously.

  4. Once reduced, rub the mixture through a fine sieve into a small saucepan.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, heat the puree and stir in a pat of butter and a piece of glaze.

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 + 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
Provides the tangy, acidic flavour that defines the puree and breaks down into a smooth texture.
Onions
Add sweetness and body as they soften and colour in the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the puree a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the mixture so the puree holds together rather than running thin.
White or brown sauce
Adds moisture and savoury depth to the onion and flour base.

The step that matters

Reducing the sorrel mixture over high heat. Sorrel is mostly water and turns dull and watery if it is not reduced. Stirring constantly prevents the flour-thickened mixture from scorching on the bottom of the pan while the excess moisture evaporates.

Swap the onion

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

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

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