Name: Sorrel
Ingredients: 3-4 plants of sorrel; water for blanching; butter

Why it works: Sorrel and butter work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 652 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sorrel

Ingredients

3-4 plants of sorrel
water for blanching
butter

Directions

Blanch the sorrel in boiling water for 10 minutes.
Drain and pass through a sieve if the leaves are not very young.
Serve with butter, or blend with spinach in equal proportions 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.

Sorrel + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together652 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

Sorrel: Leafy green that softens when blanched and gives the dish its sharp, tangy flavour.
Butter: Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the hot, softened leaves.

“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.