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Kale with Butter Sauce

A sautéed kale dish simmered in a butter and flour sauce, seasoned with salt and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Kale and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 147 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Kale with Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the kale until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter over medium heat, stir in flour until it bubbles.

  2. Gradually add boiling water, stirring continuously, season with salt and white pepper.

Serve

  1. Chop the boiled kale and warm it in the butter sauce before serving.

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. Kale + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together147 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Kale + buttertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together247 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + white peppertop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + white peppertop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,228 recipes

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Purple kale
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its leafy, tender texture once boiled.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Stirring in the boiling water. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring continuously keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against kale, butter, flour. 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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