Skip to main content
Main

Baked Cauliflower

A baked cauliflower dish with nut cream sauce and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked 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

  1. Trim the leaves from the cauliflower and soak it in salted water for 1 hour to remove insects.

  2. Cook the cauliflower in slightly salted water until tender, then drain it carefully.

  3. Place the cauliflower in a pudding dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine nut cream, white flour, and salt to taste. Add grated nutmeg if desired.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower and sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes, then remove the cover and let it brown.

  3. Serve immediately or keep in a cool place to reheat later.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cauliflower + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Nutmeg + breadtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 becomes tender when cooked.
Nut cream
Provides richness and a creamy body to the sauce.
White flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the cauliflower.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Draining the cooked cauliflower. Excess water left on the cauliflower dilutes the sauce and keeps it from thickening and clinging properly. Draining carefully before adding the sauce helps it bake up creamy rather than watery.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, cream, flour, bread):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Turmericfits about as well
  3. Nutmegthe original
  4. Celeryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cream, flour, bread. 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.

More baked cauliflower recipes

with Parmesan 4with Tomato Sauce 3 See all 24 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes