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Dandelion Greens

Boiled dandelion greens seasoned with salt, pepper, butter, topped with hard‑boiled eggs and lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Dandelion Greens

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the dandelion greens thoroughly in several waters.

Cook

  1. Boil the greens until tender, about 30 minutes for young greens.

  2. Drain the greens in a colander and press them dry.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and a little butter.

  2. Garnish with slices of hard boiled eggs.

  3. Serve with sliced lemon for a pleasant acidity.

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

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

  2. Dandelion + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together57 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Dandelion + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together77 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

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

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

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Dandelion greens
The main vegetable, which becomes tender when boiled and gives the dish its bitter flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, softening the bitterness and carrying the seasoning across the greens.
Lemon slices
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the greens' bitterness.

“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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