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Cauliflower Salad

A salad of boiled cauliflower tossed with French dressing and served on lettuce leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 151 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Cauliflower Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Remove the leaves and stalk from the cauliflower.

  2. Soak the cauliflower head in salted water for 1 hour, head down, to draw out any insects.

Cook and cool

  1. Drop the cauliflower into boiling salted water (1 teaspoon salt per quart).

  2. Cook for 1 hour or until very tender.

  3. Set aside to cool, then break into small flowerlets.

Dress and serve

  1. Pour French dressing over the cauliflower and toss to season well.

  2. Serve on lettuce leaves.

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 + lettucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together151 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the salad and becomes tender through long simmering in salted water.
French dressing
Adds acidity, oil and seasoning that coat the cooked florets and carry flavour.

The step that matters

Cooking until very tender. Cauliflower must be cooked fully so its dense florets soften evenly; undercooked pieces stay firm and taste raw, while the salt in the cooking water seasons the florets from within.

“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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