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Boiled Brussels Sprouts

Boiled Brussels sprouts seasoned with salt, baking soda, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and pick over the Brussels sprouts.

Cook

  1. Boil in water with salt and baking soda until tender, about 20 to 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the sprouts.

Finish

  1. Reheat with butter, adding salt and pepper, but do not fry them.

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

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

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

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

  3. Brussels sprouts + buttertop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together20 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Brussels sprouts
The main vegetable, softened by boiling until tender while keeping their shape.
Baking soda
Raises the water's alkalinity, helping the sprouts keep a bright green colour and soften faster.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the reheated sprouts a glossy coating.

The step that matters

Boil until just tender, then stop. Overcooking breaks down the sprouts' cell walls and turns them mushy and dull. Baking soda speeds this softening, so checking for tenderness early matters.

Swap the brussels sprouts

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper. 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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