Name: Boiled Sea Kale
Ingredients: sea kale; coarse sea salt; butter; bread

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Sea Kale

Ingredients

sea kale
coarse sea salt
butter
bread

Directions

Pick over the sea kale and tie it in bunches.
Soak the bunches in cold water for 1 hour.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
Add the sea kale and cook for 20-30 minutes until tender.
Place slices of buttered toast in a dish.
Remove the ties from the sea kale and pile it on the toast, generously buttering it.
Serve with a side of drawn butter if desired.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Kale + breadtop 25% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Kale + buttertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together247 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).