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To Boil Sprouts, Cabbages, Savoys, Lettuces, or Endive

A method for boiling various green vegetables such as endive, sprouts, savoys, lettuces, and cabbages.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Endive and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 284 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

To Boil Sprouts, Cabbages, Savoys, Lettuces, or Endive

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a fast boil.

  2. Add 1 teaspoon of baking soda to the boiling water.

  3. Wash the endive, sprouts, and spring greens thoroughly before boiling.

  4. Soak savoys, large lettuces, and close-leaved cabbages in salt water for at least 30 minutes to remove insects.

  5. Trim the stems, remove decayed leaves, and cut the vegetables into halves or quarters.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil very young greens for 15 to 20 minutes, lettuces for 20 to 30 minutes, and large savoys or cabbages for 1 hour or more.

  2. Check if the stalk of the cabbage is tender; if so, it is ready to serve.

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. Endive + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  2. Lettuce + cabbagetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  3. Endive + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Green vegetables
Provide the main body of the dish; cooking time depends on the type and size of greens.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, helping greens keep a bright green colour while boiling.

The step that matters

Boil for the right time by type of green. Young greens cook in minutes while large savoys and cabbages need an hour or more. Undercooking leaves them tough and overcooking makes them limp and dull, so check tenderness of the stalk rather than relying on time alone.

Swap the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (endive, lettuce):

  1. Beetrootfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against endive, lettuce. 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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