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Boiled Broccoli

A boiled broccoli dish served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Broccoli and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,451 recipes. Both carry linalool, which smells floral, citrus. The science ↓

Boiled Broccoli

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip off the outer leaves of the broccoli and cut the inner leaves level with the florets.

  2. Cut the stalks close to the bottom and soak the broccoli in cold salted water or vinegar and water, heads down, for 45 minutes.

Boil and serve

  1. Bring a saucepan of salted water to a boil and add the broccoli with stalks upwards, keeping the saucepan uncovered.

  2. Boil gently until done, then remove immediately with a slotted spoon and drain well.

  3. Serve with melted butter poured over the broccoli.

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. Broccoli + buttertop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Broccoli heads
Provides the main vegetable, whose tender florets and stalks become soft and sweet when boiled.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the cooked broccoli with a smooth, savoury flavour.

The step that matters

Boil gently until done, then remove immediately. Overcooking breaks down the cell walls and turns broccoli soft, dull green and watery. Removing it as soon as it is tender keeps the texture firm and the colour bright.

“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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