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Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked cauliflower dish topped with cheese, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cauliflower Au Gratin

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 half cooked, then cut it into pieces and place them in a pie dish.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk and add pepper, salt, 0.5 oz of butter, and nutmeg.

  2. Thicken the milk mixture with the wholemeal flour smoothed in a little cold milk or water.

  3. Stir in the cheese and pour the sauce over the cauliflower.

Top and bake

  1. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top, cut the remaining butter into small pieces, and place them over the breadcrumbs.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes, or until the cauliflower is soft.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cheese + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

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 turns soft and tender as it bakes.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, which thickens with the flour and sets creamy.
Wholemeal flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce that coats the cauliflower.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps the topping brown.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with the flour slurry. Flour must be smoothed in cold liquid first, or it clumps. Stirring it into hot milk gradually lets starch swell evenly into a smooth sauce.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cheese, butter, flour, nutmeg, pepper):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cheese, butter, flour, nutmeg, pepper. 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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