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Cauliflower

A creamy cauliflower soup flavored with thyme, parsley, bay leaf, onion, and white pepper, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and cut the cauliflowers into small pieces.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

Cook and strain

  1. Add the cauliflowers and stir occasionally until browned.

  2. Add thyme, parsley, bay leaf, onion (with a clove stuck in it), salt, and white pepper.

  3. Simmer gently until well cooked, then discard the onion, clove, thyme, and bay leaf.

  4. Mash the cauliflowers, strain, and return to the heat with the broth.

Serve

  1. Bring to a boil, pour over croutons, and serve.

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. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Cauliflower + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together233 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cauliflower + thymetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together25 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 soup and give it its bulk and flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the cauliflower brown in the pan.
Onion
Adds savoury depth and aroma to the broth as it simmers.

The step that matters

Browning the cauliflower. Stirring only occasionally lets the pieces brown in the butter rather than steam. Browning creates roasted, savoury flavours that carry into the finished soup, while overcrowding or too much heat can scorch the butter and make it bitter.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, butter, thyme, parsley, onion):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, butter, thyme, parsley, onion. 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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