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Baked Cauliflower

A baked cauliflower dish with cheese, butter, milk, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Cauliflower

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the soft boiled cauliflower, grated cheese, butter, and salted milk.

  3. Fill small dishes or shells with the mixture.

Bake

  1. Cover with bread crumbs and dot with small pieces of butter.

  2. Bake until light brown.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Cheese + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the filling and gives it a soft, tender texture when cooked.
Grated cheese
Melts into the filling and adds richness and savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the topping brown in the oven.
Salted milk
Moistens the cauliflower and helps bind the mixture into a creamy filling.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Baking only until light brown keeps the cheese and milk from drying out or overcooking. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction on the crumbs and butter, so watch the colour rather than just the clock.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cheese, butter, milk, bread):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, milk, bread. 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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