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Brussels Sprouts Au Gratin

A gratin of Brussels sprouts simmered in white sauce and topped with grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,987 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brussels Sprouts Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sprouts

  1. Pick and steep the Brussels sprouts in cold water with salt for a few hours.

  2. Boil the sprouts in plenty of water with 2 teaspoons of salt for 15 minutes.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain the sprouts and mix 2 tablespoons of the white sauce with them.

  2. Serve the remaining white sauce in a separate 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.

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. Sauce + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Brussels sprouts + cheesetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Brussels sprouts + saucetop 45% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5 recipes

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 and provide its fresh, slightly bitter vegetable flavour.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess, coating the sprouts and keeping them from drying out.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and browns when heated.

The step that matters

Boiling the sprouts for 15 minutes. Overboiling makes sprouts soft and mushy and releases stronger sulfur compounds, which give a bitter, cabbage-like smell and taste. Timing the boil keeps them tender but still firm.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, cheese):

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cheese. 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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