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Brussels Sprouts in Butter

A simple dish of boiled Brussels sprouts sautéed in butter and seasoned with pepper and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brussels Sprouts in Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sprouts

  1. Boil the Brussels sprouts until tender.

  2. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water to retain their color.

  3. Press out all the water.

Finish in butter

  1. Warm the sprouts in a saucepan with the butter. Shake over heat to prevent sticking.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, then serve.

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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  2. Brussels sprouts + peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35 recipes

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

  3. Brussels sprouts + buttertop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Brussels sprouts
The main vegetable, cooked until tender and then warmed through in butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the sprouts and carrying flavor as they warm.

The step that matters

Press out all the water. Water left on the sprouts dilutes the butter and makes them soggy, so pressing them dry lets the butter coat them and helps them brown lightly instead of steaming.

Swap the brussels sprouts

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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