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Beet Greens

A dish of boiled beet greens seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, served with hard boiled eggs and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,039 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Beet Greens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Do not separate the tops from the roots.

  2. Wash the beet greens carefully, examining every leaf.

  3. Remove the skin from the roots and cut coarsely.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook the beet greens in boiling salted water until tender.

  2. Drain in a colander.

  3. Place the cooked greens in a hot dish.

  4. Add salt, pepper, and butter.

  5. Garnish with hard boiled eggs.

  6. Serve with vinegar.

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. Pepper + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Beet greens
Form the main body of the dish, cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the warm greens.
Hard boiled eggs
Add a soft, mild protein element as a garnish.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Soybeanfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, butter, egg, vinegar. 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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