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Boiled Cauliflower Served with Cream

A boiled cauliflower served with a creamy sauce made from milk, butter, flour, egg white, lemon juice, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Cauliflower Served with Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cauliflower

  1. Tie the cauliflower in coarse cloth and boil in hot water with salt until tender.

  2. Drain the cauliflower.

  3. Place the cauliflower in a deep dish with the flower side up.

Make the cream sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the milk with butter and flour, stirring well.

  3. Add pepper, salt, and the beaten egg white.

  4. Boil the sauce for one minute.

  5. Remove the sauce from heat.

  6. Strain the lemon juice into the sauce.

Serve

  1. Pour half of the sauce into a sauceboat.

  2. Pour the remaining sauce over the cauliflower.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cauliflower + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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 becomes tender when boiled.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and smooth flavor.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, coating sauce with butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that thickens into a creamy texture.
Egg white
Adds body to the sauce as it is heated and gently sets.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice off the heat. Lemon juice is acidic and can cause the milk proteins to curdle when heated, so it is strained in after the sauce is removed from heat to keep it smooth.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

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