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Soup

Sorrel Soup

A soup made from sorrel, onion, butter, flour, stock, eggs, and bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Sorrel Soup

Why it works: Sorrel and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 89 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Sorrel Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. In a saucepan, combine sorrel, salt, and cold water. Cover and cook until tender.

  2. Drain and wash the sorrel with cold water, then chop finely and pass through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. In another saucepan, brown the onion in butter, then stir in flour until brown.

  2. Add hot water or stock and the prepared sorrel. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Mix egg yolks with cold water, then add boiling soup gradually, stirring well.

  4. Boil the soup for one minute after blending.

Serve

  1. Cut bread into half-inch dice and fry in hot fat until brown. Drain on a napkin.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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
Provides the soup's characteristic sour, tangy flavour and green colour.
Butter
Carries flavour and browns with the onion to build a richer base.
Flour
Browned with the butter, it thickens the soup and gives it body.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when blended in, adding richness and smoothness.
Onion
Browned in butter, it adds savoury depth to the base.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolk mixture to the boiling soup. Egg yolks thicken by setting when heated. If the boiling soup is added too quickly or not stirred well, the yolks can curdle and the soup loses its smooth texture. Adding it gradually while stirring keeps it smooth.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, butter, flour, pepper, nutmeg, egg, bread. 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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