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Creamed Cauliflower

Creamed cauliflower is cauliflower cooked in a butter, flour, milk, and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Creamed Cauliflower

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 ↓

Creamed Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Soak the cauliflower in salt water for 1 hour, flower end down.

  2. Boil in slightly salted water until parboiled, then drain.

  3. Add fresh boiling water and ½ cup milk, and cook until tender.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon butter, then stir in 1 tablespoon flour.

  2. Gradually add ½ cup of the cooking liquid and ½ cup cream, stirring constantly until smooth.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper, then pour over the cauliflower and serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and absorbs the sauce as it cooks.
Butter
Provides fat and richness, and forms the base of the roux with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it a smooth, creamy body.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, and helps build the creamy sauce.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, velvety texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce while adding the liquid. Adding the cooking liquid to the roux gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed. Dumping it in at once can cause lumps that are hard to smooth out.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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