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Cream of Sorrel

A green soup made from sorrel, spinach, lettuce, butter, eggs, cream, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sorrel and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 317 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Cream of Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Remove the stems from the sorrel, spinach, and lettuce.

  2. Melt the butter in a frying pan.

  3. Cook the greens until thoroughly done.

Finish and serve

  1. Transfer the cooked greens to a kettle with boiling water.

  2. Just before serving, stir in the beaten eggs and cream.

  3. Serve with squares of toasted bread in the soup tureen.

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sorrel + spinachtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together204 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Spinach + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together427 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

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

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

  5. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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 main tart, lemony flavour and green colour.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the greens are cooked in it.
Eggs
Lightly set by the hot soup, giving it a thicker, more velvety body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel that softens the sorrel's sharpness.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs and cream just before serving. Egg proteins set with heat, so if the soup is boiling when the eggs go in, they can curdle into specks instead of thickening it smoothly. Stir them in off the heat or at a gentle simmer, and serve promptly.

Swap the lettuce

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sorrel, spinach, butter, egg, cream, 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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