Purée de Choux de Bruxelles dite Flamande

Purée de Choux de Bruxelles dite Flamande (Brussels sprout purée, Flemish style) teaches one very precise lesson: the final butter goes into a hot purée away from the fire. On the heat it melts into grease; off the heat it binds with the vegetables and gives them a soft, even gloss.

The original entry assumed mashed potato already waiting beside the stove, a tamis stretched on its frame, and a brigade hand free to push the sprouts through it. Your honest equivalents are a small saucepan for a plain potato mash and a sturdy fine-mesh sieve. The basin of ready-made potato was brigade scaffolding, so it goes. The three-quarter cook, the butter stew, the sieve, the one-third ratio, and the final off-heat butter are the dish, so they stay. One cook, one stove, one evening.

Done properly, the purée is pale green, smooth but substantial, and rich without losing the faint brassica bitterness that makes Brussels sprouts themselves. Measure the potato only after the sprouts have been sieved, because the promised one-third is their finished bulk, not their raw weight. When the finishing butter is ready, take the pan entirely off the fire before the first cube goes in.