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Cream of Cauliflower

A creamy cauliflower soup made with cauliflower, onion, celeriac, butter, flour, milk, egg yolks, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Cream of Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Reserve 1 tablespoon of cauliflower flowerettes.

  2. Combine the remaining cauliflower, boiling water, onion, celeriac, and bay leaf in a saucepan and cook the mixture for 10 minutes.

  3. Drain the vegetables.

  4. Place the vegetables in a double boiler with butter, flour, salt, and pepper and steam the mixture for 10 minutes.

  5. Cook the reserved flowerettes in the water used for boiling the vegetables until tender, then set them aside to keep warm.

  6. Measure the cooking water and add enough to make 2 cups.

  7. Pour the water over the vegetables and cook the mixture until tender.

  8. Press the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. Add the vegetable puree to the milk and let the mixture boil once before removing from heat.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and cream together.

  4. Add some of the soup to the yolk-cream mixture, then combine everything.

Serve

  1. Pour the soup into a tureen.

  2. Add the reserved flowerettes.

  3. 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.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, pureed, gives it its thick, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the soup a rounded, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the vegetables and helps give the soup body.
Milk
Makes the soup creamy and dilutes the vegetable puree into a smooth liquid.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the soup when gently heated, adding body and silkiness.
Rich cream
Adds fat and richness, producing a smoother, more velvety texture.

The step that matters

Adding the yolk-cream mixture. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if the soup is too hot. Tempering them with some warm soup first, then combining gently, keeps the soup smooth.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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