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Cauliflowers a LA Francaise

Cauliflower heads are boiled with butter and salt, then arranged and topped with melted butter and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and lemon work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 179 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Cauliflowers a LA Francaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip away all the green leaves from the cauliflowers and divide each into three or four parts, trimming the stalks close.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the cauliflower heads down in a stewpan half filled with boiling water, adding the butter and salt.

  2. Cook until tender, about 12 to 18 minutes, then drain the water.

  3. Invert a dish over the stewpan and gently turn it upside down to arrange the cauliflowers in a large shape.

  4. Cover with melted butter mixed with lemon juice.

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 + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Cauliflower + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cauliflowers
Form the main body of the dish and soften into a tender, mild vegetable when cooked.
Good butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the cooking water and the finished dish.
Melted butter
Coats the cooked cauliflower, adding fat and a glossy finish.
Lemon juice
Adds a bright acidity that balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Cook until tender, then drain. Cauliflower cooked too long turns soft and waterlogged, and standing in water dilutes its flavour. Test the stems with a knife and drain promptly so the florets hold their shape when inverted onto the dish.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon. 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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