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Sorrel Sauce

A sauce made from sorrel, water, butter, flour, cream, salt, sugar, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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. Place the sorrel in a saucepan with a little water and stir to prevent burning.

  3. When tender, drain the sorrel and finely mince it.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the minced sorrel in a saucepan with a little butter for 30 minutes.

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

  3. Let it stew on low heat for 1 hour.

  4. Add a little coarse sea 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 sour, tangy flavour that defines the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour while the sorrel fries.
Flour
Coats the sorrel and helps thicken the sauce as it cooks.
Boiling cream
Moistens the mixture and gives the sauce a smooth, rich body.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness when beaten in before serving.
Sugar
Balances sourness from the sorrel, added only if the sauce is too acidic.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by setting when gently heated. If the sauce is too hot when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Add them off the heat or over low heat, stirring constantly, and only just before serving.

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.

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