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Brussels Sprouts

A boiled and sautéed Brussels sprouts dish seasoned with butter, sugar, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Brussels Sprouts

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove loose, hanging leaves from the Brussels sprouts and soak them in cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Wash the sprouts and boil them in 2 quarts of water for 30 minutes, adding 1 teaspoon of salt after the first 10 minutes.

Season and finish

  1. Drain the water and add 3 tablespoons of butter, 1 teaspoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of flour, ½ teaspoon of pepper, and 1 teaspoon of salt.

  2. Shake the pan over the heat for 3 to 4 minutes, or until the sprouts are slightly colored.

  3. Serve immediately in a warm 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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, cooked until tender by boiling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the sprouts and carrying flavor.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that balances the sprouts' natural bitterness.
Flour
Lightly thickens the butter so it clings to the sprouts.

The step that matters

Shaking the pan over the heat. Brief heat browns the sprouts' surfaces and sugars slightly; too long over heat dries them out and turns them bitter or mushy.

Swap the brussels sprouts

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

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