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To Boil Cauliflowers

A boiled cauliflower served with a white sauce of cream, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Boil Cauliflowers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Choose a cauliflower that is dense and white.

  2. Remove the green leaves.

  3. Soak the cauliflower in cold water with ½ cup of coarse sea salt for 1 hour.

Boil the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower in a mixture of milk and water, skimming the surface to keep it clean.

  2. Once cooked, serve it very white and slightly crimped.

  3. Cut the half-boiled cauliflower into pieces.

  4. Place the pieces in a saucepan with a little broth, mace, salt, and white pepper.

  5. Simmer for 1 hour, adding the stalk 30 minutes in.

Make the sauce

  1. Add cream, butter, and flour to the saucepan, then shake the mixture.

  2. Simmer for a few more minutes before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  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

Cauliflower
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it simmers.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.
Butter
Adds fat for a rich mouthfeel and smooth sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and body, making the sauce silkier.

The step that matters

Simmering after adding the flour. Flour must be stirred in and simmered for a few minutes so its starch fully swells and thickens the sauce and loses its raw, pasty taste. Stopping too early leaves the sauce thin and floury.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, milk, mace, cream, butter, flour, parmesan cheese):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Turmericfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, milk, mace, cream, butter, flour, parmesan cheese. 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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