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Boiled Greens

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 ingredients
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Why it works: Dock and dandelion share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Boiled Greens

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Pick the greens over carefully and wash them in three or four waters.

  2. Soak the greens in cold water for 30 minutes, then drain well.

  3. Put the greens into a pot of boiling salted water, enough to cover them.

  4. If using light greens like spinach, press them down until the pot is full.

  5. Cover and boil steadily until tender, about 20 minutes for young greens.

  6. For older greens, add a small quantity of bicarbonate of soda to the water and boil for 10-15 minutes.

  7. Turn off the water and replenish with boiling water, adding a little salt.

  8. Drain the greens in a colander and press out the water.

  9. Season with butter, pepper, and salt.

  10. Serve with poached or hard-boiled eggs on top, if desired.

  11. Optionally, boil the greens with salt pork, corned beef, bacon, or ham.

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. Dock + dandeliontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Dandelion + kaletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Turnip + kaletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Dock + kaletop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Spinach + dandeliontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (spinach, turnip, mustard, dock, lamb, dandelion, kale):

  1. Endivefits better
  2. Beetrootfits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against spinach, turnip, mustard, dock, lamb, dandelion, kale. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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