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Cauliflower Soup

A creamy soup made from cauliflower, milk, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Cauliflower Soup

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 ↓

Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and separate the cauliflower into florets.

  2. Simmer the cauliflower in boiling water with salt for 30 minutes.

Make the soup

  1. Drain the cauliflower and add milk, onion juice, and bay leaf to the water.

  2. In a bowl, mix butter and flour until smooth, then stir into the hot mixture until it boils.

  3. Add the cauliflower back to the soup and 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together935 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main body of the soup and gives it its vegetable flavour and texture.
Milk
Adds creaminess and richness to the broth.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and combines with flour to form a smooth thickener.
Flour
Thickens the soup as it heats, giving it a smooth, body-rich texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the hot mixture. Flour must be fully blended into a smooth paste before it meets the hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. The mixture then needs to reach a boil so the starch swells and thickens the soup.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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