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Cauliflower Soup

A soup made with cauliflower, stock, butter, flour, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cauliflower Soup

Why it works: Cauliflower and flour work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 569 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stock

  1. Skim the soup stock.

  2. Heat the soup stock to a boil for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain off 2 quarts of the stock.

  4. Return the remaining stock to the pot.

Cook the soup

  1. Parboil the cauliflower.

  2. Cut the cauliflower into small clusters.

  3. Add the cauliflower to the boiling stock.

  4. Cook the cauliflower slowly for 15 minutes.

  5. Stir in the butter and flour mixture.

  6. Season the soup to taste.

  7. Bring the soup to a boil 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 a mild, vegetable flavour and tender texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the soup a smoother mouthfeel.
Flour
Combined with butter to thicken the soup slightly and give it body.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour mixture. Flour clumps if added directly to hot liquid. Mixing it with butter first and stirring it in evenly helps it disperse and thicken the soup smoothly instead of leaving lumps.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against 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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