Skip to main content
Main

Brussels Sprouts

A simple boiled Brussels sprouts dish seasoned with salt, sugar, butter, pepper, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Brussels Sprouts

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and clean the Brussels sprouts, removing all dead leaves and cutting off the ends.

  2. Wash the sprouts thoroughly and blanch them in boiling water for 2 minutes.

Cook and finish

  1. Place the blanched sprouts in a saucepan with boiling water, a little salt, and a pinch of sugar.

  2. Cook without a lid until tender.

  3. Finish with butter, pepper, and lemon juice.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Brussels sprouts
Form the dish itself, providing the main body, texture and mild bitter-sweet flavour once cooked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the sprouts and carrying flavour.
Sugar
Adds a little sweetness to balance the sprouts' natural bitterness.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and cuts the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Cook without a lid until tender. Leaving the lid off lets volatile sulfur compounds, which cause strong cabbage-like odours and bitterness, escape with the steam, giving a milder flavour. Overcooking still turns the sprouts mushy and dull in colour, so watch for the point where a knife slides in easily.

Swap the brussels sprouts

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, pepper, lemon. 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.

More brussels sprouts recipes

Boiled 26Puree 7Creamed 5Soup 4Gratin 3on Toast 3 See all 67 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes