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Cauliflower Soup

A creamy cauliflower soup made with stock, milk, and tapioca.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Cauliflower Soup

Why it works: Nutmeg and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 13,015 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflower Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Wash and trim the cauliflowers, then cook them in salted water until tender. Drain and reserve the cooking water.

Make the soup

  1. Bring the reserved water to a boil, stir in the crushed tapioca, and simmer for 20 minutes.

  2. Mix the ground rice with a little cold milk.

  3. Boil the remaining milk with the stock, then stir in the ground rice and cook for a few minutes, stirring constantly.

  4. Add the cauliflower cooking water, season with salt, pepper, sugar, and grated nutmeg to taste, and bring to a boil.

  5. Stir in the cream and heat gently without boiling again.

  6. The soup is now ready to 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  2. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Rice + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,779 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cauliflower + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 recipes

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

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 its vegetable flavor.
Ground rice
Thickens the soup as it cooks with the liquid.
Crushed tapioca
Adds thickening through its starch as it simmers in the liquid.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
White stock
Provides the main liquid and savory base of the soup.

The step that matters

Stirring the ground rice into the hot milk and stock. Ground rice can clump if added without constant stirring. Keep stirring so the starch disperses evenly and thickens the soup smoothly.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, cream, sugar, nutmeg, milk, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Sweet potatofits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, cream, sugar, nutmeg, milk, 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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