Name: Brussels Sprouts for Garniture
Ingredients: Brussels sprouts; 2 tablespoons butter; coarse sea salt; black pepper

Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brussels Sprouts for Garniture

Ingredients

Brussels sprouts
2 tablespoons butter
coarse sea salt
black pepper

Directions

Boil the Brussels sprouts until tender.
In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.
Add the boiled sprouts, seasoning with salt and pepper.
Toss the sprouts until thoroughly warmed.
Arrange the sprouts in bunches around the dish.

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.

Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Brussels sprouts + peppertop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together35 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Brussels sprouts + buttertop 34% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together20 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Brussels sprouts: Main vegetable; boiling softens them until tender, and they are the dish itself.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, coating the sprouts and carrying flavor.