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Cauliflower, 'with Cooked Mayonnaise Dressing.

A cauliflower dish topped with a hot mayonnaise-based dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cauliflower, 'with Cooked Mayonnaise Dressing.

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower in salted water until tender.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, combine vinegar and water and bring to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk with olive oil, salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, onion juice, and water.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling vinegar and water until it thickens.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve the dressing hot over the cauliflower.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Olive + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Olive + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Cauliflower + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolk
Thickens the dressing and emulsifies the oil into a smooth, rich sauce.
Olive oil
Adds fat and richness, helping the yolk form a smooth emulsion.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity that balances the richness of the egg and oil.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity and fresh flavor to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Stir the egg mixture into the boiling vinegar and water. The egg yolk can scramble if it is heated too quickly or too strongly. Adding it gradually to the hot liquid while stirring keeps it smooth and lets it thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, vinegar, egg, olive, sugar, pepper, lemon):

  1. Cucumberfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, vinegar, egg, olive, sugar, pepper, lemon. 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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