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Cauliflowers and Tomatoes

A baked dish of cauliflower florets topped with tomato sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and tomato work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 91 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cauliflowers and Tomatoes

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. Boil the cauliflowers until tender.

  2. Prepare the tomato sauce as directed in another recipe.

  3. Carefully place the cauliflowers on a serving dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the sauce over the cauliflowers, leaving the center of the flowers clear.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 5 minutes.

  3. Serve immediately.

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. Cauliflower + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

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

  2. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Cauliflowers
Form the bulk of the dish and turn soft and tender when boiled.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and tangy acidity that coats the cauliflower.

The step that matters

Boil the cauliflowers until tender. Boiling only until tender keeps the florets firm enough to hold their shape. Overcooked cauliflower releases extra water and turns mushy, which makes the sauce thin and the dish soggy.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Eggplantfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against tomato, sauce. 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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