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Sauce

Common Sorrel Sauce

A sauce made from stewed sorrel, butter, pepper, salt, and optional gravy, flour, egg yolks, or sugar.

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 ↓

Common Sorrel Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sorrel

  1. Strip the large fibers from the sorrel and wash it thoroughly.

  2. Place the sorrel in a well-tinned saucepan without water.

  3. Add the butter, pepper, and salt.

  4. Stir gently until the sorrel is tender.

  5. Drain the sorrel on a sieve.

  6. Chop the drained sorrel finely.

Finish the sauce

  1. Boil the chopped sorrel for a few minutes with gravy or cream mixed with flour, or just with butter.

  2. Stir in the beaten egg yolks just before serving to soften the sauce.

  3. Add pounded sugar for extra flavor if desired.

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. Sorrel + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together419 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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 sharp, lemony acidity that defines the sauce and breaks down into a soft purée when cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the cooked sorrel.
Gravy or cream or milk
Adds liquid and body, thickening the sauce slightly with the flour when boiled.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so the sauce becomes smoother and less watery.
Egg yolks
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a softer, creamier texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the chopped sorrel with the thickening liquid. Sorrel is very acidic and can turn dull or grayish if overcooked, and flour needs a brief boil to lose its raw taste and thicken properly. Boil only a few minutes and add the egg yolks off the heat or just before serving, since yolks can curdle when overheated.

Swap the sorrel

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Sorrelthe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, cream, flour, egg, 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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