A woman, carrying a basket of wild sorrel, passes the table in the Place Nowy.

Could you make us some sorrel soup? Ken asks me. We could have it tomorrow instead of Borsch.

I guess so.

With eggs?

That I’ve never tried.

Well, he shuts his eyes, you prepare the soup, serve it, and in each bowl, you put a hard-boiled egg. You have made sure that beside each bowl there’s a knife as well as a spoon. You cut the egg into slices, and you eat it with the green soup. And the mixture of the sharp green acidity and the round comfort of the egg reminds you of something extraordinary and far away.

Of home?

Certainly not, not even for the Poles.

Of what then?

Of survival, perhaps.

— from “Kraków”, in John Berger’s here is where we meet

A recipe for sorrel soup floats through Berger’s here is where we meet like a fragrance, with allusions to it scattered through the text. It becomes the culinary equivalent to Lara’s theme in “Doctor Zhivago” — an undertone, a flavor — hardly noted as the narrative is woven around you. But other characters anticipate it, and the sorrel soup spurs the narrator to wax philosophical:

It is one of the most elementary soups in the world, and maybe that’s why, as well as nourishing, it provokes dreams. For example, if you’re cold it warms you and at the same time is refreshing. The acid sorrel makes the vegetables taste volatile and sharp. The eggs, which are larger than anything you usually find in a soup, have a rounded, solid shape. The sour cream, added at the last minute, permeates both. Jacob Boehme, the shoemaker who sold woolen gloves and lived a little to the west of Wroclaw in the seventeenth century, proposed that the world comes continually into existence by passing through seven phases. The first is Sourness, the second Sweetness, the third Bitterness, the fourth Warmth, and after Warmth, according to him, comes Love, to be followed by Sound and Language. I would place zupa szczawiowa somewhere between Warmth and Love. When you sip it, you have the impression of swallowing a place. The eggs taste of the earth of this place, the sorrel of its grass, the cream of its clouds.

All of this from sorrel soup.

And as you turn the pages, and read of ingredients for the sorrel soup as they are gradually acquired — the bacon and smietanie brought by the narrator from far away; two handfuls of freshly dug potatoes that “glow like hen’s eggs”, purchased from Bogena, “a woman with a white scarf around her head”; wild sorrel cut with a pocket knife from a nearby field — you find yourself looking forward to the next reference to the soup; you discover that you really care how it turns out, no less than you care about the outcome of the story of Mirek and Danka. You want to make the sorrel soup; you want to taste it for yourself.

But what recipe have you ever read which suggests that the sorrel leaves should feel “like green skin when you touch them. Exactly like green skin”? Which other recipe would have you use leeks that “smell of violets and nickel”, encourage you to clean them by pulling the outer leaves off “like satin sleeves”, remind you to “flicker through the skins like pages [to] wash out the irritating dirt”? Who else but John Berger would note that, as the leeks are cut into round slices, “the knife makes a ratchet noise, […] one of the oldest sounds I remember”?

No one else; which is why Berger alone can make you realize that a recipe is simply another kind of story, the ingredients the characters, each with their own unique traits and history to bring to the narrative.

John Berger’s Sorrel Soup

5 or 6 small to medium sized potatoes (if they glow like hen’s eggs, so much the better)
1 bunch of fresh sorrel leaves, cleaned and scissor-cut (finely but not too finely) into green confetti
2 leeks, cleaned and cut into rounds
3-4 slices of bacon
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 hard-boiled egg per serving
sour cream

Cut the potatoes into thin slices, and then quarter these slices. Cut the bacon strips into 1” lengths. Heat the olive oil in a cast-iron frying pan and add the cut leeks, the bacon, and the potatoes to the warm oil, cooking over a medium heat until the leeks are tender. Slip these ingredients into 6-8 cups of salted, boiling water and simmer until the potatoes are tender but not over-done. Adjust salt to taste and then add the sorrel confetti to the soup, which will turn green.

Peel the eggs (their shells should come off like brown clowns’ noses). Empty the sour cream into a bowl (its sourness will make it taste less of milk and more of sex).

Serve the soup into bowls with a ladle, and into each bowl put two halves of an egg. Make sure that there’s a knife as well as a spoon beside each bowl so that your guests can cut the egg into slices.

And as they eat the egg with the green soup the mixture of the sharp green acidity and the round comfort of the egg will remind them of something extraordinary and far away.