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Cauliflower with Brussels Sprouts

A side dish of cauliflower and Brussels sprouts topped with a creamy sauce made from egg yolks, butter, cream, and vegetable broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cauliflower with Brussels Sprouts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Clean the cauliflower and Brussels sprouts thoroughly.

  2. Boil the cauliflower and Brussels sprouts separately in salted water until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare the vegetable sauce by thickening bouillon with mashed potatoes and straining it.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the egg yolks, butter, and cream with the hot vegetable sauce.

Serve

  1. Place the cauliflower in the center of a serving dish and arrange the Brussels sprouts around it.

  2. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower and Brussels sprouts 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cauliflower + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness through their proteins setting with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds fat for a smooth, rich mouthfeel in the finished sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and softness, making the sauce silkier and milder.
Mashed potatoes
Starch that thickens the bouillon into a body-rich vegetable sauce.

The step that matters

Combining the egg yolks with the hot vegetable sauce. If the sauce is too hot when the yolks go in, the proteins scramble and the sauce turns grainy. Adding a little hot sauce to the yolks first, then whisking back into the pan over gentle heat, keeps it smooth and thickened.

Swap the brussels sprouts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, egg, butter, cream, sauce, potato):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Brussels sproutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, egg, butter, cream, sauce, potato. 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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