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Puree of Brussels Sprouts for Garniture

A creamy puree of boiled Brussels sprouts seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and optional spinach, finished with butter and meat glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Puree of Brussels Sprouts for Garniture

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the Brussels sprouts and drain them.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the sprouts with butter, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  3. Toss over heat, adding cream sauce as needed.

  4. If the sprouts lack bright green color, add some spinach.

Puree and finish

  1. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  2. Return to the saucepan, add more butter, and a few drops of meat glaze.

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. Nutmeg + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 puree and supply its vegetal flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the puree.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess so the mixture can be tossed and sieved smooth.
Spinach
Adds green color to the puree when the sprouts look pale.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Sprouts contain fibrous cell walls; pressing them through a fine sieve breaks these down and removes lumps, giving a smooth puree. Skipping or rushing this leaves a coarse texture.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brussels sprouts, butter, pepper, nutmeg, cream, sauce, meat):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brussels sprouts, butter, pepper, nutmeg, cream, sauce, meat. 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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