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Boiled Cauliflower

Boiled cauliflower served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and butter work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 823 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Boiled Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and soak the cauliflower in cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Tie the cauliflower in a piece of net or cheesecloth to prevent breaking.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil salted water and add the cauliflower; cook for about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove the net or cheesecloth and place the cauliflower on a round dish with the flower side up.

  3. Serve with plenty of melted butter.

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 + 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

Cauliflower
Is the vegetable being cooked, so its dense florets soften gently in the boiling water.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the mild, boiled florets.

The step that matters

Tying the cauliflower in net or cheesecloth. Boiling water can break apart the delicate florets as it churns. Securing the head keeps it intact while it cooks evenly.

“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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