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Swiss Chard

A boiled Swiss chard dish seasoned with butter, salt, pepper, served with hard boiled eggs, vinegar, and olive oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Chard and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 320 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Swiss Chard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the chard

  1. Pick over and wash the Swiss chard in several waters.

  2. For older chard, remove the white mid-rib.

  3. Chop the chard finely.

Cook

  1. Place the chard in a stew pan and heat gradually.

  2. Cook in boiling salted water.

  3. Boil for 25 minutes or until tender in its own juices.

  4. Drain thoroughly.

  5. Reheat.

Season and serve

  1. Season with butter, salt, and pepper.

  2. Serve with hard boiled eggs, vinegar, and olive oil.

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. Chard + olivetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together320 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Chard + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Vinegar + olivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, fruity).

  4. Pepper + olivetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,263 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Swiss chard
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender when simmered.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor across the cooked greens.
Hard boiled eggs
Add soft, mild protein texture that contrasts with the tender greens.
Olive oil
Adds fat and a fruity aroma to the finished greens.

The step that matters

Drain thoroughly. Chard leaves hold a lot of water. Leftover liquid dilutes butter and seasoning and makes the dish soggy, so the greens should be well drained before seasoning.

Swap the chard

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Tomatofits about as well
  3. Cucumberfits about as well
  4. Chardthe original

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