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Poke Stalks, with Butter Sauce

Poke stalks boiled in acidulated water and served with butter or Hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Poke Stalks, with Butter Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Gather poke stalks when they are two inches high and have only a tuft of leaves.

  2. Scrape the stalks and place them in cold, acidulated water.

  3. Tie the stalks in bundles like asparagus.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil water in a saucepan and cook the bundles until tender.

  2. Serve on a napkin with butter or Hollandaise sauce on the side.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Poke stalks
Provide the tender, edible vegetable that is the main component of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce served alongside the cooked stalks.

The step that matters

Cooking the bundles until tender. Poke stalks must be cooked fully through, since undercooked stalks stay fibrous and tough. Testing for tenderness with a knife or fork ensures even texture across the bundle.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce):

  1. Coconutfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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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