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Soup

Puree of Cauliflower

A creamy cauliflower puree soup made with stock, flour, butter, cream, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Puree of Cauliflower

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup

  1. Boil the cauliflower in the white stock for 30 minutes.

  2. Mix the flour with the butter and stir it into the stock, then boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Press the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Add the cream and bring to a gentle boil.

Serve

  1. In a heated tureen, add the whipped cream and pour the soup over it.

  2. Serve hot and season with salt and pepper.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Cooks down in the stock and is pressed through a sieve to give the soup its body.
Flour
Thickens the stock with butter so the soup becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Butter
Carries the flour into the stock and adds richness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, mellow texture to the finished soup.
Whipped cream
Floats on the hot soup in the tureen, adding a light, cool contrast in texture.

The step that matters

Bring the cream to a gentle boil. Boiling cream hard can cause it to separate or scorch on the bottom of the pan, so keeping the heat gentle keeps the soup smooth and rich.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, cream, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, pepper. 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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