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Cauliflower in White Sauce

A cauliflower dish simmered in a creamy white sauce of broth, cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cauliflower in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Half boil the cauliflower, then cut it into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the pieces in a saucepan with broth, mace, salt, and white pepper.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Add cream, butter, and flour; shake and simmer for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

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 gives it its vegetable texture.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth white sauce as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Cream
Adds body and a silky, rich texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the flour, cream, and butter. Flour needs to be dispersed and then simmered so its starch swells and thickens the sauce. If it is added in clumps or not cooked for a few minutes, the sauce can stay lumpy or taste raw.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, mace, cream, butter, flour. 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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