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Cauliflower Cream Soup

A creamy soup made with cauliflower, stock, milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 233 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflower Cream Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock and cauliflower

  1. Prepare the soup stock by boiling an old fowl or using leftover meat bones.

  2. Pick the cauliflower into small branches and boil in salted water for about 30 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Strain 1 quart of the stock into a saucepan and add the minced onion.

  2. Mash half of the cooked cauliflower and add it to the stock.

  3. Boil the milk and stir it into the mixture, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  4. Thicken the soup with a flour-and-water mixture until it resembles thin cream.

  5. Add the butter and the remaining whole cauliflower branches.

  6. Garnish with minced parsley before serving.

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. Cauliflower + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Cauliflower
Forms the body of the soup; mashed portions thicken it while whole branches add texture.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, giving the soup a smooth, mellow body.
Soup stock
Provides the main liquid and savory meaty flavor of the soup.
Flour (in the method)
Thickens the liquid so the soup takes on a creamy consistency.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a rounded, buttery flavor.

The step that matters

Boiling the milk. Milk can curdle or scorch when it boils hard or is added to very hot liquid, so it should be heated gently and stirred in carefully to keep the soup smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cauliflower, onion, mace, butter, parsley):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cauliflower, onion, mace, butter, parsley. 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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