Name: Cauliflower, with Sauce
Ingredients: 1 head of cauliflower; ½ cup of drawn butter; Juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Cauliflower and lemon work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cauliflower, with Sauce

Ingredients

1 head of cauliflower
½ cup of drawn butter
Juice of 1 lemon

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and cook

Tie the cauliflower in a net.
Boil in salted water at 400°F (200°C) for 35 to 50 minutes, depending on size.

Serve

Remove from water, undo the net, and place in a deep dish with the blossom side up.
Pour the drawn butter mixed with lemon juice over the cauliflower.

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.

Cauliflower + lemontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together179 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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: The main vegetable; it softens as it cooks and forms the body of the dish.
Drawn butter: Adds fat for richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the cauliflower.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, heavy taste of the butter.

The step that matters

Boil in salted water at 400°F (200°C). Water boils at about 212°F (100°C) at normal pressure and cannot get hotter while boiling, so 400°F is not reachable in an open pot. Check the temperature and confirm the cooking method before relying on the stated time.