Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Cauliflower with Tomato Sauce

A boiled cauliflower topped with a tomato sauce thickened with cracker dust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Cauliflower with Tomato Sauce

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 until tender, then chop it coarsely.

  2. Press the chopped cauliflower hard in a bowl or mold to keep its shape.

  3. Place the molded cauliflower on a heatproof dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook the butter and flour together.

  2. Pour in the strained tomato juice that has been stewed with half an onion.

  3. Stir until smooth, then thicken with cracker dust and season with salt, sugar, and paprika.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the molded cauliflower and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 10 minutes.

  2. Serve in the dish it was cooked in.

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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Cauliflower + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together935 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Cauliflower + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 holds its shape when pressed into a mold.
Butter and flour
Cooked together they form a roux that thickens the tomato sauce.
Strained tomato juice
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, providing its moisture and tangy flavor.
Cracker dust
Further thickens the sauce, giving it body as it is stirred.
Onion
Stewed in the tomato juice to add savory aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until smooth before thickening. Adding liquid to the roux too quickly or unevenly can leave lumps. Stirring as the liquid goes in keeps the flour evenly dispersed so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesCream of Tomato SoupCream of Tomato Soup107 recipesTomato BisqueTomato Bisque61 recipesCauliflower SoupCauliflower Soup28 recipes