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Cauliflower Fried in Batter

A dish of cauliflower florets coated in batter and fried until golden.

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 ↓

Cauliflower Fried in Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim and wash the cauliflower.

  2. Boil in salted water until tender, then drain.

  3. Wipe dry with a cloth and pick off the small branches.

  4. Season with salt and black pepper.

Fry and serve

  1. Roll in flour, then dip in batter.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

  3. Serve on a folded napkin and garnish with fried young parsley.

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. 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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 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.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the batter cling to the cauliflower.
Batter
Forms a crisp golden shell when fried in hot oil.
Hot oil
Cooks the batter quickly, drying and browning its surface.

The step that matters

Wipe the cauliflower dry before coating. Surface moisture keeps flour and batter from adhering evenly and turns the coating soggy, while dry pieces give a crisper result when they hit the hot oil.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, 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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