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Brussels Sprouts

A boiled Brussels sprout dish served with a butter, flour, and water sauce flavored with pepper and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Brussels Sprouts

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the Brussels sprouts.

  2. Remove any dead leaves.

  3. Place the sprouts in boiling water and add the coarse sea salt.

  4. Boil uncovered for 20 minutes.

  5. Drain the sprouts in a colander.

  6. Transfer the sprouts to a heated dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour to the melted butter and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the pint of water used to boil the sprouts.

  4. Stir until the sauce reaches a boil.

  5. Add the pepper and the lemon juice.

  6. Pour the sauce over the sprouts.

Serve

  1. 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.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Adding the water gradually and stirring until it boils. Flour mixed into melted butter can clump if liquid is added all at once. Adding the water gradually while stirring keeps the mixture smooth. Bringing it to a boil fully swells the flour's starch, so the sauce thickens properly.

Swap the brussels sprouts

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, lemon. 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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