Skip to main content
Sauce

Sorrel Sauce

A sauce made from cooked sorrel, butter, flour, cream, and egg yolks, seasoned with salt and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sorrel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Pick and wash the sorrel.

  2. Put it into a saucepan with a little water and stir to prevent burning.

  3. When tender, drain and mince it finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the minced sorrel in a little butter for half an hour.

  2. Dredge in 1 tablespoon of flour and moisten with boiling cream.

  3. Let it stew on low heat for an hour.

  4. Add a little salt and sugar if too acidic.

  5. Before serving, thicken with the beaten yolks of 4 eggs.

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
Provides the sharp, acidic leafy flavour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while frying the sorrel, carrying flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce by absorbing liquid as it cooks.
Boiling cream
Adds moisture and richness, creating a smooth, creamy body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce when gently heated and add richness and body.

The step that matters

Thicken with the egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the sauce is too hot they can scramble and curdle. Add them off the heat or over very low heat, stirring constantly, to keep the sauce smooth.

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.

You might also like

Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipesDutch SauceDutch Sauce74 recipes