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Cauliflower in White Sauce

A dish of cauliflower simmered in a white sauce of cream and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and flour work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 569 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cauliflower in White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Cut the boiled cauliflower into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Place the pieces in a stewpan with broth and salt.

  2. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Mix the cream and flour together.

  4. Add the mixture to the stewpan.

  5. Stir until the sauce thickens.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  3. Cauliflower + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 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 bulk of the dish and becomes tender when boiled and then simmered.
Flour
Thickens the cream and broth into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving it a smooth texture.
Broth
Provides the liquid that simmers the cauliflower and carries the flavour into the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cream and flour mixture. Flour mixed into cream before adding it to hot liquid helps prevent lumps. Stirring as it heats lets the starch swell evenly, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Arrowrootfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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