Name: Brussels Sprouts, Spanish Style
Ingredients: Brussels sprouts; 2 tablespoons butter; Coarse sea salt; Black pepper; 1 teaspoon sugar; Espagnole sauce; Roast chestnuts; Small fried sausages

Why it works: Pepper and chestnut work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 826 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Brussels Sprouts, Spanish Style

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sprouts

Boil the Brussels sprouts until tender.
In a flat saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Season the sprouts with salt, pepper, and sugar, then add them to the saucepan.
Toss the sprouts over the heat until thoroughly warmed.

Finish and serve

Add the Espagnole sauce and mix well.
Serve with roast chestnuts and small fried sausages around the dish.

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.

Pepper + chestnuttop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together826 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Sugar + saucetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,147 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sugar + chestnuttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together647 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Brussels sprouts: Form the main body of the dish and carry the flavour of the sauce.
Butter: Adds richness and helps coat the sprouts as they warm in the pan.
Espagnole sauce: Adds savoury depth and moisture that coats the sprouts.
Sugar: Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the bitterness of the sprouts.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, sugar, sauce, chestnut):

Capsicumfits better
Shallotfits better
Mustardfits better
Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sugar, sauce, chestnut. 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.