Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked dish of cauliflower in cream sauce topped with cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,655 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cauliflower Au Gratin

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. Drain a freshly boiled cauliflower and separate the florets.

Make the gratin

  1. Add the florets to a boiling cream sauce with 1 tablespoon of grated cheese.

  2. Pour the mixture into a baking dish and sprinkle with additional cheese.

Bake

  1. Bake for 15 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Cream + cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,655 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cauliflower + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

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 dish and gives it its main texture once baked.
Cream
Forms the sauce that coats the florets and keeps the gratin moist.
Cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding savory flavor and a golden crust.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Onionfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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.

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes