Why it works: Cauliflower and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 888 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓
Cauliflowers
Ingredients
Directions
Pull the whitest and closest cauliflowers into bunches.
Spread them on an earthen dish and sprinkle salt all over.
Let them stand for three days to draw out the water.
Put them into jars and pour boiling water over them.
Let them stand overnight, then drain into a fine sieve.
Transfer to glass jars and fill with distilled vinegar.
Seal the jars tightly for storage.
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.
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Cauliflower + vinegartop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together888 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
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