Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower

A simple boiled cauliflower dish seasoned with butter and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

Blanch and boil

  1. Blanch the cauliflower by covering it with boiling water.

  2. Boil for five to six minutes, then drain.

Finish cooking

  1. Place the cauliflower in a second dish of hot water to cook further.

  2. Do not let the water boil too fast to avoid breaking the florets.

  3. Add butter to the cooking water and salt when the cauliflower is half cooked.

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
Forms the main structure and texture of the dish as its florets cook through.
Butter
Adds fat and rich flavour to the cooking water and the cauliflower.

The step that matters

Keep the water from boiling too fast. Vigorous boiling agitates the cauliflower and can break the delicate florets apart. A gentler heat cooks the head evenly while keeping it intact and presentable.

“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.

More boiled cauliflower recipes

with Butter 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 97 →

You might also like

Cauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipesCream of Cauliflower SoupCream of Cauliflower Soup22 recipesCreamed CauliflowerCreamed Cauliflower17 recipesEscalloped CauliflowerEscalloped Cauliflower9 recipes