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To Cook Cauliflowers

This dish is cauliflowers cooked in salted, vinegar, borax, and sugar water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Cook Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Thoroughly wash the cauliflower and soak it in water with salt and vinegar to remove any insects.

  2. Blanch the cauliflower, then place it in a basin of cold water to cool.

Cook

  1. Drain the cauliflower and plunge it, flower side down, into a saucepan of boiling salted water with borax and sugar.

  2. Keep the water boiling steadily without covering the pan, and remove any scum that forms.

  3. Once cooked, carefully place the cauliflower on a clean cloth in a colander and cover it with the cloth to drain.

  4. Serve the cauliflower warm.

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. Vinegar + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cauliflower + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together497 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Is the main vegetable, cooked whole so its florets soften while keeping their shape.
Sugar
Adds a mild sweetness that balances the slightly bitter taste of cooked cauliflower.

The step that matters

Keep the water boiling steadily without covering the pan. Boiling steadily keeps the cooking temperature high so the cauliflower cooks evenly and quickly. A covered pan can trap steam and cause the water to boil over, while letting scum stay on the surface can cloud the water and affect flavour.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, 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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