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Pukee of Brussels Sprouts for Garniture

A purée of boiled Brussels sprouts finished with butter, cream sauce and seasoning, served as a garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and spinach match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 603 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Pukee of Brussels Sprouts for Garniture

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the Brussels sprouts and drain them.

  2. Place the sprouts in a saucepan with 2 tablespoons of butter.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  4. Toss over heat and add cream sauce.

  5. If the sprouts are not bright green, add some spinach for color.

  6. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

  7. Return to the saucepan and add more butter and a few drops of meat glaze.

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. Nutmeg + spinachtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together603 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + spinachtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Brussels sprouts
Form the main body of the purée and provide its vegetable flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the purée.
Cream sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess, helping the purée become smooth and rich.
Meat glaze
Adds savory depth and a richer, more rounded flavor.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the cooked sprouts through a fine sieve breaks down the fibers and removes lumps, which is what gives the purée a smooth texture. Skipping or rushing this step leaves the result grainy and stringy.

Swap the spinach

The recipe marks spinach as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (brussels sprouts, butter, pepper, nutmeg, cream, sauce, meat):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Spinachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brussels sprouts, butter, pepper, nutmeg, cream, sauce, meat. 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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