Skip to main content
Main

Scalloped Cauliflower

A baked cauliflower dish with mashed potatoes, butter, breadcrumbs, and optional cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Scalloped 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. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Remove the florets from the leaves and mix them with half its weight of mashed potatoes.

  3. Add grated cheese to the mixture if desired.

Bake and serve

  1. Place a tablespoon of the mixture in scallop shells with a piece of butter.

  2. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  3. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  4. Cauliflower + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together36 recipes

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

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 provides its main vegetable flavour and body.
Mashed potatoes
Adds starch and creaminess, helping the mixture hold together and stay moist.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp golden topping through browning in the oven.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and extra browning when included.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking at 400°F browns the bread crumb topping through dry heat, but the mixture underneath must heat through as well. Pulling it out too early leaves the top pale and the centre cool, while leaving it too long can dry the surface.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Tomatofits better
  2. Onionfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, butter, bread, 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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesPotato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes