Skip to main content
Main

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

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lettuce and endive 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. Fill a large pot with water and bring it to a rapid boil.

  2. Add a generous amount of coarse sea salt and carbonate of soda if desired.

  3. Wash the vegetables thoroughly before boiling.

  4. For savoys, large lettuces, and cabbages, soak in salt water for 30 minutes to remove insects.

  5. Trim the stems.

  6. Remove decayed leaves.

  7. Cut the vegetables into halves or quarters.

Boil

  1. Boil very young greens for 15 to 20 minutes.

  2. Boil lettuces for 20 to 30 minutes.

  3. Boil large savoys or cabbages for 1 to 1.5 hours, or 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. Lettuce + endivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

  2. Cabbage + lettucetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together622 recipes

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

  3. Cabbage + endivetop 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
Are the main ingredient, cooked until tender enough to eat.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the boiling water so the vegetables take on flavour as they cook.

The step that matters

Boil in a rapid boil with plenty of salt. Starting in rapidly boiling water keeps the cooking water hot and the greens bright green, while salt seasons them as they cook. Timing matters too: larger, tougher heads need the longer times listed.

Swap the cabbage

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against lettuce, endive. 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.

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCabbage DressingCabbage Dressing19 recipes