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Cauliflower Soup

A creamy soup made with cauliflower, ham, celery, stock, butter, onion, flour, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Cauliflower Soup

Why it works: Cauliflower and celery work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 488 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil the cauliflower in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the cauliflower.

  3. Rub the cauliflower through a sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Fry the onion until brown.

  3. Add the minced ham and celery.

  4. Pour in 1 quart of stock and boil slowly for 30 minutes.

  5. Add another quart of stock.

  6. Add the cauliflower to the soup.

  7. Bring the soup to a boil.

  8. Remove from heat.

  9. Thicken the soup with flour mixed in milk. Stir well.

  10. Serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cauliflower + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Onion + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,518 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cauliflower + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together935 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Cauliflower + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the body of the soup and, once sieved, thickens it smoothly.
Butter
Fat that carries the flavour of the onion, ham and celery into the soup.
Onion
Browned in butter to add savoury, sweet depth to the base.
Stock
Liquid base that gives the soup its main body and savoury flavour.
Flour
Starch that thickens the soup when mixed into milk and stirred in.
Minced raw ham
Adds salty, savoury meatiness to the stock base.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup with flour mixed in milk. Flour lumps if added dry or unmixed, so it must be blended into milk to a smooth paste first. Stirring well then lets the starch gelatinise evenly and thicken the soup without lumps.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, ham, celery, flour, milk):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, ham, celery, flour, milk. 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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