Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower Salad

A salad of cooked cauliflower tossed in butter, mayonnaise, and topped with pickled cabbage and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cauliflower and cabbage match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 305 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflower Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Break the cooked cauliflower into sprays.

  2. Dip each spray in warm cooking butter infused with onion for 30-60 minutes.

  3. Season the butter with mignonette and coarse sea salt.

Assemble and serve

  1. Arrange the cauliflower in the center of a plate.

  2. Cover with mayonnaise or salad sauce to mask it.

  3. Garnish with heaps of red pickled cabbage and tufts of parsley around the base.

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 + cabbagetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together305 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + cabbagetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  5. Onion + cabbagetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,001 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

White cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides the main texture.
Cooking butter
Adds richness and carries the onion and seasoning flavours into the cauliflower.
Onion
Infuses the warm butter with a savoury aroma.
Mayonnaise or salad sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess, coating the cauliflower.

The step that matters

Dipping the cauliflower in warm onion butter. The butter must stay warm enough to stay fluid and soak into the florets; if it cools and sets, the flavour will sit on the surface instead of penetrating the cauliflower.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, butter, pepper, sauce, cabbage, parsley):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, butter, pepper, sauce, cabbage, 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.

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipes