Name: Cauliflower with Cheese Sauce
Ingredients: 1 head cauliflower; salt; cheese sauce

Why it works: Cheese and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,987 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cauliflower with Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

1 head cauliflower
salt
cheese sauce

Directions

Remove leaves and cut off the stalk of the cauliflower.
Soak the cauliflower head down in cold water for 30 minutes.
Cook the cauliflower head up in boiling salted water for 20 minutes or until soft.
Drain the cauliflower, separate the flowerets, and reheat in cheese sauce.

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.

Cheese + saucetop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,987 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cauliflower + cheesetop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together171 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Cauliflower + saucetop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together463 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).