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Stewed Sorrel in Cream

A stew of sorrel leaves cooked in butter, flour, and cream, 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 ↓

Stewed Sorrel in Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Pick and wash the sorrel leaves, changing the water several times to remove grit.

  2. Put the sorrel in a saucepan with a small amount of water and stir over heat for a few minutes. Drain and chop the sorrel finely.

Make the stew

  1. Melt a large lump of butter in a stewpan and add the chopped sorrel. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes.

  2. Drain excess moisture from the sorrel, sprinkle with flour, and pour in 1 pint of boiling cream.

  3. Simmer gently for 1 hour, seasoning with salt and sugar if the sorrel is acidic.

  4. Beat the yolks of 4 eggs, pour over the sorrel, and stir until thickened. Serve hot.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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 leaves
Provides the main tart, green flavour and bulk of the stew.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour as the sorrel cooks down.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the cream becomes a body-rich sauce.
Cream
Supplies fat and moisture, giving the stew a smooth, rich texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the stew on gentle heating and add richness.

The step that matters

Pouring in the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by setting when heated gently. If the stew is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy, so the mixture should be stirred steadily while it thickens.

Swap the sorrel

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

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

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