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Boiled Brussels Sprouts

A simple boiled vegetable dish of Brussels sprouts served with butter 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. Clean the Brussels sprouts, wash them, and remove any dead or discolored leaves.

Cook and serve

  1. Bring a gallon of water to a boil and add salt and baking soda.

  2. Add the sprouts to the boiling water and cook uncovered over high heat until tender.

  3. Drain the sprouts and serve immediately with melted butter and a sprinkle of pepper.

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
Form the dish itself; boiling softens their fibrous texture until tender.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, coating the sprouts for a smoother mouthfeel.
Baking soda
Raises the cooking water's pH, which helps the sprouts stay green while they cook.

The step that matters

Cook uncovered over high heat until tender. Sprouts turn grey-green and mushy if overcooked. Boiling in a large volume of water at a steady high heat cooks them quickly and evenly, so they should be checked early and drained as soon as they are tender.

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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