Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower Soup

A creamy soup made with cauliflower, stock, spices, flour, milk, and cream, served with fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Cauliflower Soup

Why it works: Clove and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower until half-cooked, then drain and remove all green parts.

  2. Cut the white parts into small pieces and add to the stock with celery seeds, bay leaf, mace, cloves, allspice, and peppercorns.

  3. Bring to a boil and simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

  4. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the soup

  1. Mix the flour or Florador with a little milk to form a smooth paste.

  2. Add the paste to the soup along with the remaining milk, return to the saucepan, and boil for 10 minutes while stirring continuously.

  3. Season to taste, and if the soup is too thick, add more milk.

  4. Remove from heat, stir in the cream, and serve with small dice of fried bread on the side.

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. Clove + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Celery + allspicetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cauliflower + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together488 recipes

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

  4. Celery + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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 soup and gives it its flavour and texture when rubbed through a sieve.
Flour or florador
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it body.
Milk
Adds moisture and mild sweetness, and loosens the soup to the desired thickness.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel at the end.
White stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury depth for the soup.

The step that matters

Boiling the thickened soup while stirring. Flour needs to reach a boil and be stirred constantly, or it can clump and leave a raw, pasty taste and uneven thickness.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, flour, cream, milk, celery, clove, allspice):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, flour, cream, milk, celery, clove, allspice. 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.

You might also like

Cream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipesCreamed CauliflowerCreamed Cauliflower17 recipesCelery CroquettesCelery Croquettes16 recipes