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Salad

Cauliflower Salad

A salad of boiled cauliflower dressed with melted butter, vinegar, pepper, salt, and optional mustard, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cauliflower Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cauliflower in salted water until tender.

  2. Once cold, cut the cauliflower into sprigs and arrange them on a dish.

Make and serve

  1. Melt the butter and vinegar together, adding pepper and salt to taste.

  2. If desired, stir in mustard.

  3. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower and garnish with parsley.

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 + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the salad and provides its main texture once boiled until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the warm sauce a smooth, rounded mouthfeel.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the buttery sauce and balances its richness.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour to the sauce when included.

The step that matters

Melt the butter and vinegar together. Melting butter gently keeps the sauce smooth; overheating can separate the fat from the liquid, and vinegar added to hot butter can make the sauce split or taste harsh.

Swap the mustard

The recipe marks mustard as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, butter, vinegar, pepper, parsley):

  1. Shallotfits about as well
  2. Radishfits about as well
  3. Broccolifits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, butter, vinegar, pepper, 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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