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Stewed Hops, with Sauce

A stew of young hop stems cooked with vinegar, butter, and Allemande sauce, finished with lemon juice and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 young hop stems into 1‑inch pieces and peel them.

  2. Soak the pieces in cold acidulated water.

Cook and dress

  1. In a saucepan, bring lightly salted water with a little vinegar to a boil.

  2. Add the hops to the boiling liquid and cook until tender.

  3. Drain and dry the hops on a napkin.

  4. In a saucepan, melt butter.

  5. Season the hops with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and sugar.

  6. Toss the hops over heat until warmed.

  7. Add a few spoonfuls of Allemande sauce.

  8. Stir in a piece of butter, lemon juice, and chopped parsley until melted.

  9. Garnish with small pieces of toast.

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, cooked until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, glossy finish to the hops.
Allemande sauce
Adds a creamy, savoury body that coats the hops.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Cook until tender. Hop stems turn from crisp to soft within a short time in boiling water. Overcooking leaves them mushy and waterlogged, while undercooking leaves them fibrous. Draining and drying them well afterwards keeps the dressing from thinning out.

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.

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