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Baked Cauliflower

A baked cauliflower dish with butter sauce and bread crumbs, served with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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 ↓

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. Boil the cauliflower until tender, then split it through the middle.

  2. Lay the cut sides down in a baking dish.

  3. Pour the drawn butter sauce over and around the cauliflower.

Bake and serve

  1. Sift fine bread crumbs on top.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until it begins to brown.

  3. Serve in the baking dish with cut lemon.

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. Cauliflower + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cauliflower + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 gives a tender, soft texture when cooked.
Drawn butter sauce
Adds fat and moisture, enriching the cauliflower and keeping it from drying out in the oven.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a topping that browns in the oven, adding a golden color and a contrasting texture.

The step that matters

Boil the cauliflower until just tender. Overboiling breaks down the cauliflower's cell walls, leaving it waterlogged and mushy. It should be just tender before it goes into the oven, since it will cook further there.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, butter, sauce, 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.

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