Skip to main content
Main

Brussels Sprouts with Curry Sauce

A dish of boiled Brussels sprouts tossed in a curry-flavored sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Brussels Sprouts with Curry Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sprouts

  1. Pick over Brussels sprouts, remove wilted leaves, and soak in cold salt water for 15 minutes.

  2. Cook in boiling salted water for 20 minutes, or until easily pierced with a skewer.

  3. Drain the Brussels sprouts and pour over ½ cup curry sauce.

Make the curry sauce

  1. To make the curry sauce, mix ¼ teaspoon mustard, ¼ teaspoon salt, and a few grains of paprika.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolk, olive oil, vinegar, and onion juice.

  3. Cook over hot water, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.

  4. Stir in ¼ teaspoon curry powder, melted butter, and chopped parsley.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Olive + vinegartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

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 vegetable; cooking softens them until a skewer pierces them easily.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies the oil and vinegar and thickens the sauce as it heats.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, helping form a smooth emulsified sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the richness of the yolk and oil.
Butter
Adds fat and a rounder, richer flavor to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the sauce over hot water while stirring constantly. Egg yolk thickens with gentle heat but can scramble if overheated or left unstirred. Constant stirring over hot water keeps the heat even so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, mustard, egg, olive, vinegar, onion, butter):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, mustard, egg, olive, vinegar, onion, butter. 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.

You might also like

Brussels SproutsBrussels Sprouts92 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes