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Cauliflowers

Boiled cauliflower served with a butter and flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,113 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Remove the green parts from the cauliflower and cut the flowers into four parts.

  2. Soak the cauliflower florets in water for 1 hour.

  3. Boil a mixture of milk and water.

  4. Add the cauliflower and skim the saucepan well.

  5. When the stalks are tender, carefully drain the flowers in a colander.

Make the butter sauce

  1. Add 1 tablespoon of water, 1 tablespoon of flour, ½ cup of butter, ¼ teaspoon of pepper, and ¼ teaspoon of salt to a stewpan. Mix until the butter is melted.

  2. Add half of the cauliflower, cut for pickling, to the stewpan. Cook for about 10 minutes, turning occasionally.

Serve

  1. Place the stewed cauliflower in the center of a plate. Arrange the boiled cauliflower around it.

  2. Pour the melted butter over the top. Serve immediately.

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 + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Flour and butter 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, cooked until tender enough to eat.
Flour
Thickens the butter sauce so it coats the cauliflower.
Butter
Provides richness and fat, and forms the sauce with the flour.

The step that matters

Cooking the stewed cauliflower in the butter sauce. Flour thickens the butter only as it heats and cooks through; cooking too briefly leaves the sauce thin, while overheating can make the butter separate and turn greasy.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper. 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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