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Stewed Cauliflower

A stew of cauliflower, mushrooms, and egg yolk sauce served over toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Stewed Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Select a close, white cauliflower, remove outer leaves, and break apart the florets.

  2. Wash the cauliflower well in cold water, then boil it in a kettle of boiling water with 1 teaspoon salt for 20–25 minutes until tender.

  3. Carefully lift the cauliflower with a skimmer and place it on toasted and buttered bread.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, add the flour, and mix.

  2. Gradually add the stock, stirring until the sauce boils.

  3. Add the chopped mushrooms and cook for a moment longer.

  4. Remove the saucepan from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and onion juice.

  5. Do not boil after adding the eggs.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce around the cauliflower and 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  4. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

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 dish, cooked until tender enough to be served on bread.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and stock into a smooth base for the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and helps the flour cook into a roux.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Do not boil after adding the eggs. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat, but boiling them can scramble the proteins, causing curdling and a grainy sauce instead of a smooth one.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, bread, butter, mushroom, egg, pepper, flour):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, bread, butter, mushroom, egg, pepper, 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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