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Cauliflower a LA Sauce

A boiled cauliflower served with a thickened sauce of stock, vinegar, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 888 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflower a LA Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Serve it whole or cut into pieces in a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cullis, vinegar, and butter.

  2. Heat the sauce until boiling hot and thick.

Serve

  1. Pour the hot sauce over the cauliflower 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. Cauliflower + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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, cooked until tender so it can be served whole or in pieces.
Cullis
Provides the thick, savory base of the sauce, giving it body and flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth texture to the sauce as it heats.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the sauce until boiling hot and thick. Heating the cullis, vinegar and butter together lets the sauce thicken and emulsify. If it is not heated enough it stays thin and may separate, so it should be brought fully to a boil before pouring.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter. 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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