Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked cauliflower dish topped with sauce, breadcrumbs, and optional cheese.

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

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the boiled cauliflower in a buttered baking dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pour the white or cream sauce over the cauliflower.

  2. Cover with buttered breadcrumbs and sprinkle with grated cheese if desired.

  3. Bake in the center of the 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Cauliflower + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the sauce.
White or cream sauce
Provides moisture and a creamy texture that keeps the cauliflower from drying out.
Buttered breadcrumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the topping brown and melt.

The step that matters

Bake until the crumbs are brown. Baking stops when the crumbs brown, not at a fixed time. Underbaked topping stays pale and soft, while overbaking can dry the sauce and toughen the crust.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, butter, 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