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To Boil Cauliflowers

A boiled cauliflower dish simmered with milk, water, mace, salt, pepper, cream, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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 with a handful of salt for 1 hour.

  4. Remove the leaves.

  5. Half-boil the cauliflower.

  6. Cut the cauliflower into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the cauliflower in a mixture of milk and water, skimming the saucepan to keep it clean.

  2. In a stewpan, combine the cauliflower pieces with a little broth, mace, salt, and white pepper.

  3. Simmer for 30 minutes.

  4. Add cream, butter, and flour to the stewpan.

  5. Shake the stewpan.

  6. Simmer for a few more minutes before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, becoming tender as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter mixture into a smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, giving the sauce a silky texture.
Milk
Forms the cooking liquid, adding mild sweetness and creaminess.

The step that matters

Simmering the flour, butter and cream. Flour thickens only when heated long enough to swell its starch granules, so stirring and simmering the mixture gently prevents lumps and a raw, pasty taste.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, milk, 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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