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Sorrel Soup Without Meat

A vegetable soup made with sorrel, chervil, lettuce, leek, butter, stock, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and chervil match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sorrel Soup Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the sorrel, chervil, lettuce, and leek.

  2. Chop all the vegetables finely.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, stew the vegetables with butter and coarse sea salt until tender.

  2. Add the vegetable stock or water and let it stew again.

  3. Before serving, mix in the beaten egg yolks and cream or milk, ensuring it does not boil.

  4. Season to taste.

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 + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chervil + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together396 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Sorrel + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together317 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Sorrel + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together112 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chervil + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Sorrel
Gives the soup its sharp, lemony acidity and bright green flavour.
Egg yolks
Thicken the soup into a smooth, creamy texture when gently heated.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and softens the sourness of the greens.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the vegetables soften gently while stewing.
Leek
Provides a mild onion-like sweetness and body to the base.

The step that matters

Mixing in the egg yolks and cream. If the soup boils after the egg yolks go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keeping it below boiling lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sorrel, chervil, leek, butter, egg, cream):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Turnipfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, chervil, leek, butter, egg, cream. 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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