Skip to main content
Main

Stewed Hops, with Sauce

A stew of young hop stems cooked in salted water, finished with butter, Allemande sauce, lemon, parsley, and served with toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Stewed Hops, with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hops

  1. Cut and peel young hop stems into 1-inch pieces.

  2. Place the stems in cold water with a little vinegar.

  3. Bring lightly salted water to a boil in a saucepan.

  4. Add the hops and cook until tender.

  5. Drain the hops and dry them on a napkin.

Make the sauce and finish

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the hops to the butter.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a pinch of sugar.

  4. Toss over heat until warmed.

  5. Add a few spoonfuls of Allemande sauce.

  6. Add a piece of butter, lemon juice, and chopped parsley.

  7. Toss until the butter melts.

  8. Garnish with small pieces of toast 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Young hop stems
Form the main body of the dish, with a tender, vegetable texture after cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when tossed with the hops, and helps them glaze.
Allemande sauce
Adds a creamy, rich body that coats the hops.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Drain and dry the hops well before tossing them in butter. Excess water left on the cooked hops dilutes the butter and sauce, so they become watery instead of coating well. Drying on a napkin removes surface moisture before the hops meet the hot butter.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, pepper, sugar, sauce, lemon, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, pepper, sugar, sauce, lemon, parsley. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes