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Puree of Cauliflower

A creamy cauliflower puree made with butter, cream, stock, and seasonings, served with fried croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Puree of Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Soak the cauliflowers in salt water for 1 hour before boiling.

  2. Bring a pot of water to a boil, adding 1 teaspoon of salt for each quart of water.

  3. Boil the cauliflowers until tender, then lift them out and drain.

Make the puree

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour, stock, cream, and seasonings.

  3. Add the drained cauliflower and mix well.

  4. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve.

  5. Reheat the mixture.

Serve

  1. Serve garnished with fried croutons.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflowers
Form the bulk of the puree, providing the main body and flavor.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the stock and cream into a body that holds the puree together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, softening the texture of the puree.
White stock
Supplies the liquid that the flour thickens and adds savory depth.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a wire sieve. Pressing the cooked cauliflower through a sieve breaks down fibers to give a smooth puree; skipping or rushing this leaves a lumpy, stringy texture.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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