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Baked Cauliflower

A baked cauliflower dish with bread crumbs, butter, milk, and corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower in salted water until tender, then drain.

  2. Break the cauliflower into small pieces.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a dish, layer bread crumbs, then cauliflower, and scatter bits of butter on top.

  2. Pour enough milk to cover the cauliflower.

  3. For each pint of milk, add 1 teaspoon of corn starch and mix well.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cauliflower + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together37 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptenal (green).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 boiled and baked.
Milk
Provides liquid that bakes into a moist, creamy sauce around the cauliflower.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk so it sets into a sauce rather than running off.
Butter
Adds fat that encourages browning on the crumb topping and enriches flavor.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping that contrasts with the soft cauliflower.

The step that matters

Adding the corn starch to the milk. Corn starch must be fully mixed into the milk so it dissolves evenly; unmixed starch clumps and leaves pockets of raw, floury texture instead of a smooth sauce when heated.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, milk, corn. 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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