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Boiled Cauliflower

Boiled cauliflower served with a butter, flour, and milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Boiled Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Remove the outer green leaves and cut off the stem close to the flower.

  2. Wash well.

  3. Soak the cauliflower head in cold water for 1 hour to remove insects and freshen the flowers.

  4. If necessary, quarter the cauliflower neatly and tie it in cheesecloth to prevent breaking.

Boil and drain

  1. Place cauliflower in a pot with plenty of slightly salted boiling water.

  2. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Remove any scum that arises.

  4. Lift cauliflower carefully from the water.

  5. Drain well.

  6. Remove the cloth.

  7. Place the cauliflower stem down in a serving dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Beat butter and flour to a cream.

  2. Pour in boiling milk.

  3. Add ½ teaspoon salt.

  4. Boil sauce for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  5. Sprinkle ½ teaspoon salt over cauliflower before pouring sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cauliflower + milktop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together314 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 in salted boiling water.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth white sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it boils.

The step that matters

Boil sauce for 5 minutes, stirring constantly. Flour thickens milk only when it is heated enough for its starch to swell. Constant stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the bottom of the pan, giving a smooth sauce.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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