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Greens, Stewed

A dish of greens simmered with herbs, onion, garlic, bacon, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Greens, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Wash the greens several times and drain well.

  2. Boil the greens in salted water for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the greens and press out the water.

  4. Soak the greens in cold water for 30 minutes, then drain again.

Stew

  1. Cover the greens with stock and add herbs, onion, garlic, bacon, pepper, and salt.

  2. Stew gently until tender.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Garlic + peppertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

  4. Clove + garlictop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Greens
Form the body of the dish, becoming soft and tender as they stew.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky, savoury flavour to the stewing liquid.
Onion
Adds savoury sweetness as it softens into the stew.
Garlic
Adds aroma and pungent flavour that mellows during stewing.

The step that matters

Boiling and soaking the greens. Boiling in salted water and then soaking in cold water helps remove bitterness and some of the water, so the greens stew evenly without becoming waterlogged or sour.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, pepper):

  1. Cuminfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, pepper. 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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