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Lean Sorrel
Remove the stems from four pints of sorrel, wash it well in several waters, drain and chop it up with a well-cleaned head of lettuce; then add half a bunch of chervil and chop all together very finely. Place all in a stewpan stir well on a hot stove for three or four minutes, and set in the oven until the vegetables are tender; then add one and one-half ounce of butter and stir again for about ten minutes, or until the sorrel is reduced to a pulp. Season with one pinch of salt and a little pepper, pour into it a thickening of the yolks of two eggs, and one-half breakfast cupful of cream, stir well without boiling, and serve.
Puree of Sorrel with Hard-Boiled Eggs Wash well and boil the sorrel, changing the water twice during the operation. When cooked drain the sorrel and chop it, pass it through a fine hair-sieve into a saucepan, mix with it a little milk and flour, season to taste with pepper and salt, and let it simmer by the side of the fire for twenty minutes. Mix a lump of butter with the sorrel, turn it onto a hot dish, garnish with slices of hard-boiled eggs, and serve.
Two French sorrel purees, both meatless. The first is enriched with an egg-and-cream liaison; the second is plainer and finished with hard-boiled egg.
- What "lean" means"Lean" here is the English rendering of maigre — a dish made without meat or meat stock, suitable for fast days. It is not a comment on richness; the first version carries butter, cream and two yolks.
- Four pints of sorrelMeasured as loose leaves before stemming, that is 8 cups, perhaps 8 to 12 ounces by weight. Sorrel collapses like spinach and more so; expect the whole quantity to cook down to a small amount of puree.
- The hinge: never let the liaison boilOnce the yolks and cream go in, keep the pan off direct heat and stir constantly. Boiling curdles the yolks and the puree turns grainy. Heat it only until it thickens and coats the spoon.
- Oven and stewpanThe recipe gives no temperature or time: "set in the oven" until the vegetables are tender. A moderate oven, with the pan covered, is the usual modern reading; a low burner with the lid on does the same thing and is easier to watch.
- Use a non-reactive panSorrel is high in oxalic acid and will pick up a metallic taste and grey colour from bare cast iron or unlined aluminium. Stainless, enamelled cast iron or a lined copper pan keeps the flavour clean and the colour olive rather than slate.
- MeasuresOne and a half ounces of butter is 3 tablespoons. A "breakfast cupful" is a large cup of about 8 to 10 fluid ounces, so half of one is roughly a half cup of cream or slightly more — start there and add more if the puree is stiff.
- ChervilHalf a bunch is a generous handful of leaves, added raw with the greens. If you cannot find it, a mix of flat-leaf parsley with a little tarragon comes closest; plain parsley alone loses the anise note that lifts the sourness.
- Changing the water in the second versionBoiling the sorrel and changing the water twice has the effect of washing out acidity, giving a milder puree; the recipe does not say why it is done. Skip the water changes and you keep the sharpness.
- Hair sieveA fine-mesh strainer worked with a wooden spoon or a food mill does the job. A blender gives a smoother result but a slacker one; drain the cooked sorrel well first either way.
Sorrel was a standard kitchen green in French cooking long before it was a garnish, valued for the sharp oxalic tang that stood in for lemon in sauces for shad, salmon and veal. A puree of it, cooked down to a pulp and bound with butter and yolks, is a classic garnish, and it appears in a Waldorf book of this period because Oscar Tschirky's kitchen worked from the French repertoire. The pairing with hard-boiled egg in the second version is traditional across northern Europe as well as France, the mild yolk offsetting the acid; sorrel largely fell out of American markets in the twentieth century, which is why the herb now reads as obscure while the technique is entirely ordinary.