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Escaloped Cauliflower

A baked cauliflower dish topped with a buttered breadcrumb and egg mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Escaloped Cauliflower

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Clip the cauliflower into clusters and pack into a buttered pudding dish, stems downward.

Make the topping

  1. Mix bread crumbs with melted butter and cream or milk to form a soft paste.

  2. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add the beaten egg and mix well.

  4. Spread the mixture over the cauliflower.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the dish tightly.

  2. Bake for 6 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

  3. Remove the cover and brown the top before serving hot.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cauliflower + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 topping covers and bakes over.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and cream to form a soft paste that bakes into the topping.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the topping brown and taste savoury.
Egg
Binds the crumb mixture so it holds together as it sets in the oven.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture to soften the crumbs into a spreadable paste.

The step that matters

Cover the dish tightly before baking. The covered dish traps steam so the cauliflower cooks through and the topping sets moist. Uncovering afterwards lets the top dry and brown.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, cream, pepper, egg. 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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