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Cauliflower, with Sour Sauce

A boiled cauliflower served with a sour sauce made from water, vinegar, flour, butter, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and flour work together. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 569 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cauliflower, with Sour Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cauliflower in salted water until tender.

  2. In a saucepan, combine water and vinegar.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the mixture with flour rubbed smooth with butter.

  2. Boil the sauce and season with a little salt.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cooked cauliflower.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cauliflower + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 is cooked until tender.
Vinegar
Provides the sour acidity that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, coating sauce.
Butter
Rubbed with the flour to help it blend smoothly and adds richness.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with flour rubbed smooth with butter. Flour added directly to hot liquid can clump into lumps. Rubbing it smooth with butter first coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly and thicken the sauce without lumps.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, flour, butter. 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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