How many people does it take to change the fortunes of a vegetable?

It needed 11,000 to make cauliflower the flavour of the month

It has always been there, lurking at the back of the British culinary consciousness. Humble and stoic, with its sturdy white flowers and its unique crumbly texture, it has been the staple vegetable of the Sunday roasting classes. The fallback vegetable. The second change bowler. The last resort.

It has always been there, lurking at the back of the British culinary consciousness. Humble and stoic, with its sturdy white flowers and its unique crumbly texture, it has been the staple vegetable of the Sunday roasting classes. The fallback vegetable. The second change bowler. The last resort.

But now, after years playing second fiddle to the glamorous courgette and the versatile mange-tout, the cauliflower's moment in the sun has arrived, and The Grocer magazine wants the whole world to know. This week the fresh food weekly published a startlingly detailed survey of 11,000 people dedicated to the vegetable. It claims a staggering 975 million "cauliflower meals" were eaten in Britain last year: a rise of six per cent.

It's an impressive finding, not least when you consider the momentous scale of the survey undertaken. The British people were supplied with polls during the General Election campaign which were taken from samples one tenth of the size used to tease out the great Cauliflower Conundrum.

"I bet more people buy cauliflower than voted", says The Grocer's deputy editor, Sian Harrington. "We always use a massive consumer panel because this is market research and it's very important to the industry. It's incredibly useful for our readers, too, who want to know when and where to buy their produce." The survey uncovered some intriguing trends, but none so arresting as that which proved the cauliflower renaissance has crept up on us despite a considerable falling away in the popularity of the its standard bearer, cauliflower cheese.

"So many people used to just boil cauliflower and have done with it," says Mark Hix, the chef-director of The Ivy restaurant, and food writer

for The Independent, "but there are loads of great things you can do with it. You can blanch and then roast it. It goes well with pine nuts, raisins and parmesan. You can make a delicious cauli- flower soup, or you can purée it like you would do a carrot. Then there's always good old piccalilli."

Is Hix pleased that cauliflower is rebounding from its slump? "Yeah, I'm a bit of a fan, actually," says the chef. "It's certainly under-used in kitchens, and there are two good seasons for it - January in the West Country, which is the main one, while a summer cauliflower grows up north."

Despite the variations on the cauliflower theme suggested by Hix, the survey still seems to suggest that a significant part of the vegetable's role is as part of a traditional Sunday roast. But there has been a 40 per cent rise in cauliflower consumption at the evening meal, a major boost which must be explained to a degree by cauliflower's pride of place in many supermarket ready-meals.

Children are really driving the tea-time revolution. Under-14s ate a staggering 69 per cent more cauliflower before bedtime than in 2003. Children, though, are still "under-indexing" on the cauliflower compared to the more general rise in fruit and vegetable intake, says Harrington. "Supermarkets might want to take a look at the ways in which cauliflower can be made more attractive to kids," she argues. "That's certainly one use for the survey."

One other demographic that is seriously neglecting its cauliflower, though, is the 25-34 age-bracket. "Young trendies" account for only 10 per cent of consumption.

As staggering as these numbers are, and as wide-reaching the implications, The Grocer realises that this is only one area in which the cold facts of Britain's consumer habits must be brought to the people. "We publish a survey like this every week, where we go into consumer habits regarding a particular type of fresh produce," says Harrington. And what's next week's? "Haddock," she replies. The nation waits with baited breath.