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A dish of cooked greens seasoned with pepper, salt, butter, and flour, finished with broth, vinegar, and fried sippets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Modern Cookery

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the greens

  1. Lift the cooked greens out and press the water from them.

  2. Chop the greens slightly and heat them in a clean saucepan with pepper, coarse sea salt, and butter.

Thicken and serve

  1. Dredge in a little flour and stir well.

  2. Add the broth or gravy and boil quickly until the mixture is fairly dry.

  3. Stir in the vinegar or lemon juice and serve hot with fried sippets around 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Cooked greens
Form the main body of the dish, with their texture softened by cooking.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid so the greens cling together rather than sitting in liquid.
Broth or gravy
Adds savory liquid and flavor that reduces to coat the greens.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, savory flavors.

The step that matters

Boil quickly until fairly dry. Fast boiling evaporates the excess liquid so the flour-thickened broth becomes a coating rather than a soup. Boiling too gently leaves the greens watery and dilutes the flavor.

“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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