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A Cauliflower Cheese

A baked dish of cauliflower topped with seasoned grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 687 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

A Cauliflower Cheese

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 cauliflower in salted water until tender but not breaking apart.

  2. Remove the cauliflower from the stems and place it in a deep round dish in small pieces.

Bake

  1. Season the grated cheese with pepper, salt, and a little mustard, then cover the cauliflower with it.

  2. Bake in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until the cheese is 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. Cauliflower + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together687 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

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

  4. Cheese + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,805 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Cauliflower
Forms the tender body of the dish and holds its shape when cooked until just tender.
Grated cheese
Melts into a sauce over the cauliflower and browns in the oven for flavor and color.
Mustard
Adds a sharp, pungent note that balances the richness of the cheese.

The step that matters

Boil the cauliflower until tender but not breaking apart. Overcooking softens the cauliflower's cell walls too far, so it turns mushy and waterlogged in the dish. Stopping at tender keeps the florets intact and lets them hold up under the melted cheese.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Lettucefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, pepper, mustard. 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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