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Brussels Sprouts Saute
1 quart Brussels sprouts 3 tablespoons butter 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper Blanch the sprouts, and drain well. Put them into a broad-bottomed saucepan with the butter and other seasonings. Place over a hot fire, and shake frequently. Cook five minutes, and serve hot.
A two-step vegetable dish: parboil, then finish in butter over high heat. Everything depends on how dry the sprouts are when they hit the pan.
- The hinge: drain hard"Drain well" is the whole recipe. Sprouts hold water in their leaf layers, and any that remains will steam them into drabness instead of browning them. Drain, then spread on a towel and blot before they go near the butter.
- A quart of sproutsMeasured whole in a dry quart measure, that is roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb, or four servings as a side dish. Trim the stems, pull off loose outer leaves, and halve any that are much larger than a walnut so they cook evenly.
- What "blanch" meant hereProbably not the modern 30-second dip. In cookery of this period the word usually covered a short boil, and since the five minutes in butter that follows is mainly for browning and seasoning rather than cooking through, boiling until barely tender -- about 4 to 6 minutes for small sprouts -- is the sensible reading. An ice bath is not called for but keeps the colour bright.
- Broad-bottomed saucepanA wide skillet or saute pan. Surface area is the point: crowded sprouts release steam faster than it can escape and will not colour.
- "A hot fire"Medium-high on a modern burner — hot enough that the butter foams and the cut faces take colour within a minute. Butter at this heat will brown; that is desirable, but it will also burn if the pan sits still, which is why the recipe says to shake frequently.
- Seasoning1/4 teaspoon pepper for a pound of sprouts is assertive by current habit. Add it near the end if you would rather not scorch it in the butter.
- Why sprouts taste different nowVarieties grown since the 1990s have had much of the bitter glucosinolate bred out of them, so today's sprouts need less taming than the ones this recipe assumes. A squeeze of lemon or a little vinegar at the end, not in the original, suits the modern vegetable.
Brussels sprouts take their name from the market gardens around Brussels, where they are documented as a distinct crop by the eighteenth century, with a traditional but poorly evidenced claim to medieval Flemish origins. What is more telling is where this recipe sits: under "Meat Substitutes." Meatless cookbooks of this era were written for two audiences at once — vegetarians on principle, and households cutting back on butcher's meat for reasons of cost or wartime conservation. Sprouts belong to the cabbage family. The generous butter here does the work that meat would otherwise have done: richness, browning, and something savoury to hold the plate together.