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Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked cauliflower dish topped with butter and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and butter work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 823 recipes. Both carry 2,3-pentanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Cauliflower Au Gratin

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 tied in a net in plenty of hot salted water for 40 minutes.

  2. Place the boiled cauliflower in a buttered baking dish with the florets facing upward.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the cauliflower with melted butter and sprinkle fine breadcrumbs over the top.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes to brown the breadcrumbs.

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 + 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 gratin and becomes tender when boiled.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the breadcrumbs brown in the oven.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping when baked.

The step that matters

Bake to brown the breadcrumbs. Breadcrumbs need dry, direct oven heat to turn golden and crisp. Coating them in melted butter first helps them brown evenly, while the short bake keeps the cauliflower from drying out.

“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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