Name: Poke Stalks, with Butter Sauce
Ingredients: poke stalks (2 inches high); cold water; lemon juice (for acidulated water); butter (for serving)

Why it works: Lemon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Poke Stalks, with Butter Sauce

Ingredients

poke stalks (2 inches high)
cold water
lemon juice (for acidulated water)
butter (for serving)

Directions

Prepare

Gather poke stalks when they are 2 inches high with only a tuft of leaves.
Scrape the stalks and place them in cold water mixed with lemon juice.
Tie the stalks in bundles like asparagus.

Cook and serve

Boil water in a saucepan and cook the bundles until tender.
Serve the poke stalks on a napkin with melted butter on the side.

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.

Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Poke stalks: Provide the tender, asparagus-like vegetable that is the main component of the dish.
Butter: Adds richness and fat, served melted as a sauce to coat the cooked stalks.

“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.