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Caulifloweb Soup

A creamy soup made with cauliflower, butter, flour, milk, bouillon, sugar, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Caulifloweb Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Clean and boil the cauliflower heads until almost tender.

  2. Remove the cauliflower and place it on a sieve to drain.

Make the soup

  1. In a separate pan, bake the butter and flour together until golden.

  2. Add the milk, bouillon, sugar, and salt to the butter‑flour mixture.

  3. Cut the cauliflower into small pieces and add them to the soup.

  4. Bring the soup to a quick boil and serve with bread dumplings.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the body and bulk of the soup as it is cut and added in pieces.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when cooked with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the soup when baked with butter until golden.
Milk
Makes the soup creamy and mellows its flavour.
Bouillon
Provides the main savoury liquid base of the soup.

The step that matters

Baking the butter and flour until golden. The flour must cook in the fat until golden to remove its raw taste and to thicken the soup smoothly, so it should be stirred constantly to avoid scorching or lumps.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, flour, sugar. 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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