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Brussels Sprouts, Boiled

A simple boiled Brussels sprouts dish seasoned with salt, baking soda, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and butter 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 ↓

Brussels Sprouts, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the Brussels sprouts, removing any insects and discolored leaves.

  2. Wash the sprouts thoroughly.

Boil

  1. Bring a saucepan of water to a boil and add salt and baking soda.

  2. Add the sprouts to the boiling water and keep the pan uncovered.

  3. Boil the sprouts quickly until tender, then drain them.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter or toss in butter with a seasoning of pepper and salt.

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. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Sauce + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter 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

Brussels sprouts (in the method)
Form the main vegetable; boiling softens their fibrous texture until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour across the sprouts when tossed in.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, which helps the sprouts stay bright green while cooking.

The step that matters

Boil the sprouts quickly, uncovered. Brief, vigorous boiling in plenty of water cooks sprouts to tenderness before they turn grey and mushy. Keeping the pan uncovered lets volatile sulfur compounds escape, which reduces the strong cabbage odour.

“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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