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Minced Kale

A boiled and sautéed kale dish seasoned with salt, butter or oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Kale and butter work together. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 247 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Minced Kale

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the kale

  1. Remove all old or tough leaves from the kale.

  2. Wash the kale thoroughly and drain it.

Boil and mince

  1. In a kettle, bring 1 gallon of water and 1 teaspoon of coarse sea salt to a boil.

  2. Add the kale and boil rapidly with the cover off until tender, about 30 to 50 minutes.

  3. Pour off the water and chop the kale finely.

Finish and serve

  1. Return the chopped kale to the kettle and add 1 tablespoon of butter or 2 tablespoons of oil and 2 tablespoons of water for each pint of minced kale.

  2. Cook for 10 more minutes and serve immediately.

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 + buttertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Kale
The main vegetable, which becomes tender and is minced into a soft, finely chopped dish.
Butter or oil
Adds fat and richness, giving the minced kale a smoother mouthfeel and carrying flavor.

The step that matters

Boil rapidly with the cover off until tender. Boiling uncovered in plenty of water lets volatile sulfur compounds escape, which keeps the kale milder in flavor. Cooking until fully tender breaks down tough cell walls so the leaves become soft enough to mince.

“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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