Why it works: Kale and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 226 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓
Sea Kale, Boiled
Ingredients
Directions
Wash the sea kale.
Bring a pot of salted water to a boil.
Add the sea kale and simmer for 15 minutes, then drain.
In another pan, heat enough gravy to cover the sea kale and simmer until tender.
Transfer the sea kale to a serving dish.
In the gravy pan, make a brown sauce by adding butter and flour, then flavor with lemon juice.
Pour the sauce over the sea kale and serve.
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.
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Kale + lemontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together226 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Kale + flourtop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together147 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together30,404 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (kale, butter, flour):
- Avocadofits better
- Lemonthe original
- Coconutfits about as well
- Limefits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against kale, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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