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Baking

Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked cauliflower dish topped with white sauce, buttered crumbs, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and cheese 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 Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble

  1. Place boiled cauliflower in a buttered baking dish.

  2. Pour white or cream sauce over the cauliflower.

  3. Cover with buttered crumbs.

  4. If desired, sprinkle ½ cup grated cheese on top.

Bake

  1. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven until the crumbs are 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. Sauce + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cauliflower + cheesetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Cauliflower + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Boiled cauliflower
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides the tender, vegetable base.
White sauce or cream sauce
Adds moisture and richness, coating the cauliflower and keeping the gratin from drying out.
Buttered crumbs
Adds a crisp, golden topping as the butter helps the crumbs brown in the oven.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce and adds savory flavor and browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Bake until the crumbs are brown. Baking long enough lets the buttered crumbs toast and brown, which gives the crisp contrast the dish depends on. Stopping early leaves a pale, soft topping.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cheese. 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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