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To Preserve Sorrel

A preserved herb mixture of sorrel, leeks, parsley, chervil, and purslane, seasoned with coarse sea salt and covered with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

To Preserve Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pick and chop the sorrel, leeks, parsley, chervil, and purslane finely in a kettle.

  2. Stew the herbs in their own juice, stirring continually to prevent burning.

  3. When the juice begins to dry and the mixture thickens, add coarse sea salt.

  4. Transfer the mixture into jars, let it cool, and cover with melted butter.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Leek + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together148 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together774 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Sorrel + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 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
Provides the bright, sour flavour that defines the preserve.
Leeks
Add mild onion-like sweetness and body as they soften during stewing.
Melted butter
Forms a sealing layer over the surface that helps keep air away from the herbs.

The step that matters

Stewing the herbs while stirring continually. Finely chopped herbs contain a lot of juice and scorch easily on the base of the kettle. Constant stirring spreads the heat evenly and lets the juice evaporate gradually, so the mixture thickens without burning and turning bitter.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

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