Name: Green, or Sorrel Sauce
Ingredients: 1 large bunch of sorrel, washed and cleaned; 2 tablespoons butter; Salt, to taste; Pepper, to taste; 1 pinch powdered sugar; Optional: Cayenne, nutmeg, and lemon juice

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Green, or Sorrel Sauce

Ingredients

1 large bunch of sorrel, washed and cleaned
2 tablespoons butter
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
1 pinch powdered sugar
Optional: Cayenne, nutmeg, and lemon juice

Directions

Make the sauce

Place the cleaned sorrel in a saucepan with the butter.
Cover and cook over low heat for 15 minutes.
Pass the sorrel through a fine sieve using the back of a wooden spoon.
Season with salt, pepper, and powdered sugar.

Serve

Heat the sauce and serve it over lamb, veal, or sweetbreads.
Add cayenne, nutmeg, or lemon juice if desired.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Sorrel + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together89 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,318 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Sorrel + lemontop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together149 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel: Cooks down into a soft, tangy purée that forms the body and flavour of the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cover and cook over low heat for 15 minutes. Sorrel breaks down quickly and can scorch or turn dull and brown if overheated. Gentle covered cooking traps its moisture so it softens evenly into a smooth purée while keeping its bright green colour.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sorrel, butter, pepper, sugar, lemon):

Parsleyfits better
Tarragonfits better
Thymefits about as well
Nutmegthe original

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