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Soup

Sorrel to Cook

A cooked sorrel dish flavored with butter, flour, lemon juice, sugar, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 to Cook

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Wash the sorrel thoroughly in several waters, then drain.

  2. Remove the thick mid-rib from large leaves and tear the sorrel into shreds if using "giant" sorrel.

Cook and finish

  1. In a saucepan, add the sorrel with the moisture that clings to it and 1 ounce of butter. Cook until reduced and tender.

  2. Dredge in flour while stirring, then rub through a sieve.

  3. Reheat, season with salt, lemon juice, and sugar 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. Sorrel + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together231 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sorrel + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together149 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sorrel + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main flavor and, once cooked down, the soft body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Dredged in while stirring, it thickens the cooked sorrel as it reheats.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sharp, green flavor of the sorrel.

The step that matters

Dredge in flour while stirring. Flour added to hot liquid clumps unless it is stirred in steadily, so it should be dredged gradually while stirring to thicken evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits about as well
  2. Vanillafits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, butter, flour, sugar. 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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