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Baked Cauliflower

A baked cauliflower dish topped with a creamy cheese sauce and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 the cauliflower

  1. Wash the cauliflower in cold salted water.

  2. Boil the cauliflower in salted boiling water until tender, then drain.

  3. Transfer the cauliflower to a baking dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, stir in the flour, and add the milk and cream smoothly.

  2. Add the grated cheese, salt, and pepper to the sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and dot with butter.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the surface is browned.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 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 tender vegetable base that the sauce and crumbs sit on.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce that coats the cauliflower.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it body and softness.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, making the sauce silkier.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and fat, and browns on the surface in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor to the sauce and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Make the sauce smoothly. Flour must be stirred into melted butter before the liquid is added, and the milk and cream added gradually while stirring. This keeps the starch dispersed so the sauce thickens without lumps.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, cream, cheese, pepper, 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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