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Cauliflower a LA Louis Quatorze

A boiled cauliflower dish flavored with butter, nutmeg, and bouillon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 126 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflower a LA Louis Quatorze

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the cauliflower repeatedly in lukewarm water.

Cook

  1. Boil the cauliflower in bouillon with a little nutmeg until tender.

  2. Drain the cauliflower and return it to the pot.

  3. Add the butter and shake over low heat until melted.

Serve

  1. Serve immediately.

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 + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 recipes

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

  2. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cauliflower + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it simmers in the bouillon.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating as it melts over the cauliflower.
Bouillon
Simmers the cauliflower and adds savory flavor that it absorbs as it cooks.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic flavor to the cooking liquid and the cauliflower.

The step that matters

Add the butter and shake over low heat until melted. High heat can cause the butter to separate or brown before it coats the cauliflower evenly. Gentle heat melts it into an emulsified, glossy coating, and shaking spreads it across the florets.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg. 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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