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To Boil Cauliflowers

A boiled cauliflower served in milk and water, kept white and slightly crimped.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and milk work together. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 314 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

To Boil Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose a cauliflower that is close and white.

  2. Cut off the green leaves and check for caterpillars.

  3. Soak the cauliflower in cold water for 1 hour.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the cauliflower in a mixture of milk and water.

  2. Skim the saucepan to keep the water clean.

  3. Serve the cauliflower very white and slightly crimped.

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

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

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 its texture softens as it cooks.
Milk
Added to the cooking water to help keep the cauliflower looking white.

The step that matters

Skim the saucepan during boiling. Scum and particles that rise while boiling can cloud the water and darken the cauliflower, so skimming keeps the water clean and the florets white.

“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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