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Purée of Sorrel (1 tablespoonful of butter Salt)
1 tablespoonful of butter, Salt and pepper to taste.
Wash the sorrel through several waters, cut off the stems, the leaves only are good. Put a half pint of water and a teaspoonful of salt in a saucepan, throw in the sorrel at the first boil. Boil uncovered ten minutes. Drain and chop very fine. Return to the saucepan, add the butter, stock and a palatable seasoning of salt and pepper. Let boil up once and serve with breaded veal cutlet, or it may be served with fricandeau of veal.
The printed ingredient list has come down to us incomplete — the butter and seasoning survive, the sorrel and stock quantities do not — so treat this as a method rather than a formula.
- Quantities to work fromSorrel collapses to almost nothing: about 1 lb of trimmed leaves yields two to three modest servings of purée. Figure a tablespoon of butter and 2 to 4 tablespoons of veal or chicken stock per pound, added at the end to loosen the purée.
- Ten minutes is too longSorrel is thin-leaved and acidic; it slumps into a soft mass in two to three minutes at a boil. A full ten minutes cooks out what little texture there is and drives the flavour into the water. Pull it as soon as the leaves have gone limp and dull.
- The colour will go anywayThe acid in sorrel destroys chlorophyll on contact with heat, so the bright green turns olive-brown no matter how briefly you cook it. This is expected, not a fault, and no amount of uncovered boiling or baking soda is worth attempting to prevent it.
- Use a non-reactive panSorrel's oxalic and other acids pick up metallic flavours from bare aluminium, cast iron and unlined copper. Stainless or enamelled ware only, and the same goes for the knife you chop with.
- Don't salt the blanching water heavilyThe teaspoonful of salt in half a pint is a lot for greens that will be seasoned again at the end, and sorrel is already sharp. Salt lightly, then correct after the butter and stock go in.
- Chopping versus puréeingChopping versus pureeing -- "Chop very fine" is the knife-work route, though period kitchens also pushed cooked greens through a sieve or tammy; cooked sorrel goes through a food mill or a few pulses of a food processor into a smooth puree in seconds. Squeeze the drained leaves firmly first or the result will be watery.
- Fricandeau of vealA larded, braised veal round, sliced and served in its own reduced gravy — the pairing is deliberate, since the sour purée cuts the richness of larded veal. A modern plate of veal or pork cutlets, or a piece of rich fish, does the same job.
- A note on oxalic acidSorrel is high in oxalates, which is exactly why it tastes lemony. It is a normal food in normal portions, but a purée concentrates it, so this is a condiment-sized side dish rather than a bowl of greens.
Sorrel (Rumex acetosa) was a kitchen-garden staple long before lemons were cheap: its sourness comes from oxalic acid, and for centuries it was the green that supplied acidity to sauces and soups in northern Europe. The French treatment — blanch, drain, chop, finish with butter and stock, and serve as purée d'oseille alongside veal — is what this recipe reproduces, down to the fricandeau, a reminder of how thoroughly French cookery shaped the instructional literature aimed at housekeepers. Sorrel largely disappeared from commercial produce in the twentieth century, probably because the leaves bruise and wilt fast and travel badly, which may be why it survives mainly in gardens, farmers' markets and the older cookbooks that still assume you could step outside and cut some.