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Kale, with Cream

A sautéed kale dish finished with butter, cream, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Kale and nutmeg share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 39 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Kale, with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kale

  1. Wash and trim the kale.

  2. Boil the kale in lightly salted water until tender.

  3. Immerse the kale in cold water, then drain and press dry.

  4. Chop the kale finely and place it in a saucepan with butter.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  2. Add a little cream and reduce to the desired consistency.

  3. Serve warm.

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. Kale + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Kale + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together492 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Kale
Forms the bulk of the dish and, once chopped and reduced, gives it a tender, soft texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, and reducing it coats the kale to form a creamy consistency.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, helping the chopped kale soften gently in the saucepan.

The step that matters

Reduce the cream to the desired consistency. Cream thickens as its water evaporates and its fats coat the greens. Reducing too little leaves the dish loose and watery, while reducing too long can make it stiff and greasy.

Swap the kale

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, nutmeg, cream):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Kalethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, nutmeg, cream. 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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