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Brussels Sprouts

Boiled Brussels sprouts tossed with butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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

  1. Boil the Brussels sprouts in a saucepan until tender.

  2. Pour off all the water.

  3. Add butter, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  4. Toss over the fire until quite dry.

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

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

  4. Brussels sprouts + peppertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Brussels sprouts + lemontop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6 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

Brussels sprouts
Make up the bulk of the dish; boiling softens them to a tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, coating the sprouts and carrying their flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds a small amount of acidity that brightens the buttery flavour.

The step that matters

Drying the sprouts after boiling. Water left on the sprouts dilutes the butter and seasoning, so they taste watery and the seasoning slides off. Tossing over heat evaporates the remaining moisture so the butter clings to the surface.

Swap the brussels sprouts

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against 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.

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