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To Stew Spinage and Sorrel

A simple stew of spinach and sorrel cooked with water, thickened with flour, and seasoned with pepper and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Spinach and sorrel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 204 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Stew Spinage and Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the spinach and sorrel very clean.

  2. Cut them a little and place in a stew pan with water.

Cook

  1. Stir over the fire until they soften and become liquid.

  2. Leave to stew at a distance from the fire for an hour, stirring occasionally.

  3. Thicken with flour, then add pepper and salt before serving.

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. Spinach + sorreltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Spinach + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Spinach + flourtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Spinach
Forms the bulk of the stew and breaks down into a soft, tender body.
Sorrel
Adds a sharp, acidic tang that balances the mild, earthy greens.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the stew becomes smooth and clings to the greens.

The step that matters

Stewing at a distance from the fire. Gentle, indirect heat for an hour lets the greens soften fully without scorching or sticking. Occasional stirring keeps the bottom from catching while the leaves break down.

Swap the spinach

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

  1. Kalefits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Turnipfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, flour, 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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