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Shaping and Serving the Cauliflower

A cauliflower dish topped with buttered breadcrumbs, egg yolks, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Shaping and Serving the Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Cook the cauliflower until tender, then drain the water.

  2. Arrange the cauliflower pieces around the side of a bowl, filling the center to maintain its shape.

  3. Drain the water from the bowl and carefully transfer the cauliflower to a buttered round platter.

  4. Season the top with a pinch of salt and pepper.

  5. Sprinkle the top with the mixed chopped egg yolks and parsley.

Make the butter and bread crumbs

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat until light brown, being careful not to burn it.

  2. Add the bread crumbs to the melted butter and stir for about 3 seconds until they turn light brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Pour the butter and bread crumb mixture over the cauliflower and serve immediately.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Cauliflower + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

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

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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 carries the buttery topping.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour, and browns to a nutty aroma when heated gently.
Bread crumbs
Toast in the browned butter to add a crisp, golden texture on top.
Egg yolks
Add richness and a creamy note to the garnish.

The step that matters

Browning the butter and bread crumbs. Butter can go from light brown to burnt quickly. Over low heat and watched closely, it develops a nutty flavour. Past that point it turns bitter, and the crumbs can scorch within seconds.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, bread, pepper, egg, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, bread, pepper, egg, parsley. 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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