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Cauliflowers, Boiled

Boiled cauliflower served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and butter work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 823 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cauliflowers, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose a close and white cauliflower. Trim off decayed leaves and cut the stalk flat.

  2. Soak the cauliflower in salt water for 1 hour to remove insects.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil water in a large pot and add salt. Place the cauliflower head down in the boiling water.

  2. Boil briskly, uncovered, for 12-15 minutes for small cauliflowers or 20-25 minutes for large ones.

  3. Remove the cauliflower with a slotted spoon and let it drain.

  4. If large enough, place it upright on a serving dish and pour melted butter over it before serving.

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. Cauliflower + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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.
Plain melted butter
Adds richness and moisture when poured over the cooked cauliflower.

The step that matters

Boiling time for cauliflower size. Boiling too long makes cauliflower soft and waterlogged, while too short leaves the stem and core firm. Matching the time to the head's size lets the heat reach the centre evenly.

“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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