Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower Soup, Without Meat

A creamy cauliflower soup made with butter, flour, onion, parsley, mace, water, milk, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflower Soup, Without Meat

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cauliflower into bunches, reserving about 1 cup of small clusters.

  2. Chop the remaining cauliflower, onion, and parsley.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the chopped vegetables with water and mace; cook for 1 hour.

  2. Rub the mixture through a colander to obtain a puree.

  3. Return the puree to the pot and season with pepper and salt.

  4. As it boils, stir in the reserved whole clusters, previously boiled tender in salted water.

  5. When the soup is hot, stir in the floured butter until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour into a tureen and add the boiling milk.

  2. Serve with sliced lemon and cream crackers.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the body of the soup and, when pureed, gives it its smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and carries the flour that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter into a roux-like paste.
Milk
Adds creaminess and mild sweetness, softening the soup's flavor.
Onion
Contributes savory aroma and depth as it softens in the cooking liquid.

The step that matters

Stir in the floured butter when the soup is hot. Flour mixed with butter thickens only when heated enough to swell its starch. Adding it to a cold or barely warm soup can leave lumps or a thin result, while stirring steadily while it is hot helps it blend smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Creamed CauliflowerCreamed Cauliflower17 recipesEscalloped CauliflowerEscalloped Cauliflower9 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes