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Brussels Sprouts

Cooked Brussels sprouts boiled with baking soda and salt, served with a rich cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Brussels Sprouts

Why it works: Cream and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,787 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Remove any discolored leaves from the Brussels sprouts and wash them well.

  2. In a saucepan, bring 2 quarts of water to a boil and add ¼ teaspoon baking soda.

  3. Add the Brussels sprouts and boil rapidly until tender, about 30 minutes.

  4. Just before they are done, add 1 tablespoon of salt.

Drain and serve

  1. Drain the sprouts in a colander and keep them warm over steam if not serving immediately.

  2. When ready to serve, place the sprouts in a vegetable dish and pour 1 pint of rich cream sauce over them.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Brussels sprouts + creamtop 41% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3 recipes
  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 vegetable and become tender when boiled rapidly.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, which helps the sprouts keep a bright green color.
Rich cream sauce
Adds fat and richness, moistening the sprouts and carrying flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling until tender. Sprouts cooked too briefly stay firm and bitter, while overcooking releases sulfurous compounds that smell strongly and turn the sprouts grey and mushy. Checking for tenderness, rather than relying only on the clock, keeps them at the right point.

Swap the brussels sprouts

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

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sauce. 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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