Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower with Cheese

A baked cauliflower dish topped with grated cheese and served with white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cheese and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,987 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cauliflower with 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 until tender.

  2. Separate the cauliflower into sections and place in a dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Layer the grated cheese on top of the cauliflower.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the cheese is browned.

  3. Serve hot with white sauce.

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. Cheese + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Cauliflower + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, cooked until tender before baking.
Grated cheese
Melts over the cauliflower and browns in the oven, adding savoury flavour and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Bake until the cheese is browned. The cheese should brown without drying out. Cauliflower is already cooked, so baking only needs to melt and colour the cheese. Watching the colour, rather than the clock, prevents scorching or a rubbery topping.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, sauce. 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