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Brussels Sprouts, Saute
Wash, and drain one pound of sprouts; put them into boiling water for fifteen minutes, with half an ounce of salt to each gallon, and when done, dry them on a clean cloth. Dissolve half an ounce of butter in a pan, and shake the sprouts in it over the fire for a minute or two; season them with pepper, salt, and a little nutmeg, and serve very hot. Sprouts about the size of a walnut have the most delicate flavour. Sufficient for two or three persons. Probable cost, 2d. to 4d. per pound.
A clean two-stage method — blanch, then finish in butter — that still works, with one timing to revise.
- Boiling timeFifteen minutes will reduce walnut-sized sprouts to grey mush and drive off the sulphur compounds as smell rather than flavour. Five to seven minutes in well-salted boiling water is enough; a thin knife should meet slight resistance at the core.
- Salt in the waterHalf an ounce to the gallon is roughly 14 g to about 4.5 litres, which is light by current practice. Season the water more assertively since the sprouts absorb very little.
- Drying themThe instruction to dry on a cloth is the hinge of the recipe. Wet sprouts steam in the pan instead of browning, and the butter will not cling. Blot them properly, and let the residual heat carry off the last of the moisture.
- Butter quantityHalf an ounce is one tablespoon for a pound of sprouts — enough to gloss, not to sauté in any real sense. If you want browned, blistered edges rather than a coating, use two to three tablespoons and give them four or five minutes over higher heat.
- HalvingCassell's assumes small sprouts left whole. Sprouts sold today are often larger; halve the big ones through the root so the cut face can take colour, and shorten the blanching further.
- NutmegGrate it fresh and use very little — a few rasps for the whole pound. Pre-ground nutmeg is flat and, in this quantity, tastes dusty.
- Yield and costTwo to three as a side dish, as stated. The "2d. to 4d. per pound" is a Victorian market price and is of historical interest only.
Brussels sprouts are often said to have been cultivated in the Low Countries by the late eighteenth century, though the record is uncertain, and they are generally traced, as the name suggests, to market gardens around Brussels; they reached English kitchen gardens in the early nineteenth century and were a well-established winter vegetable by the time Cassell's was compiled. The entry sits in a dictionary that gives several treatments of the same vegetable in sequence — plain boiled, in sauce, sauté. The note that sprouts the size of a walnut have the most delicate flavour reflects a garden economy in which the cook or the kitchen gardener picked selectively over a long season, rather than buying a uniform bag.