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To Boil Cauliflowers

Boiled cauliflower served with a white sauce or a Parmesan sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

To Boil Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Choose a close, white cauliflower and cut off the green leaves.

  2. Soak the cauliflower in cold water with a handful of coarse sea salt for 1 hour.

Make the white sauce

  1. Boil the cauliflower in a mixture of milk and water, skimming the surface to remove any impurities.

  2. Cut the half-boiled cauliflower into pieces.

  3. Place the pieces in a saucepan with broth, mace, salt, and white pepper.

  4. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Add the stalk 15 minutes before the flower.

  6. Add cream, butter, and flour. Shake the mixture.

  7. Simmer for a few more minutes before serving.

Bake the Parmesan version

  1. Drain the boiled cauliflower for the Parmesan version.

  2. Cut the drained cauliflower into pieces.

  3. Arrange the pieces in a pudding basin to resemble a whole cauliflower.

  4. Cover with a sauce made from grated Parmesan, butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  5. Bake for 20 minutes until browned.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and gives it its vegetable texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it coats the cauliflower rather than running off.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the Parmesan sauce as it heats, giving it a set, custardy body.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty flavour and helps the top brown during baking.
Milk
Forms the creamy base of the sauce and adds mild sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks to the Parmesan sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot they can scramble and curdle. Keep the heat gentle so the sauce turns smooth and thick.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, milk, mace, cream, butter, flour, parmesan cheese):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, milk, mace, cream, butter, flour, parmesan cheese. 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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