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Cauliflowers with Cheese

A baked dish of boiled cauliflower mixed with béchamel, cream, and cheeses, topped with Gruyère and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cauliflowers with Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Trim and boil the cauliflowers until tender, then drain and break them into pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, combine the cauliflowers with béchamel sauce, cream, Parmesan cheese, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and cayenne.

  2. Let the mixture simmer for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in the egg yolk and lemon juice.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a serving dish and sprinkle with Gruyère cheese and bread crumbs.

  2. Brown lightly under a broiler and serve.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cauliflower + nutmegtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together126 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

Cauliflowers
Forms the bulk of the dish and provides its main texture once cooked tender.
Béchamel sauce
Provides a creamy, cohesive base that coats the cauliflower pieces.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savory, salty flavor and helps the sauce taste rich.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce slightly as it is stirred in.
Gruyère cheese
Melts and browns on top, creating a golden, savory crust.
Bread crumbs
Adds a crisp, golden topping that contrasts with the creamy interior.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk and lemon juice. Egg yolk thickens when heated, so add it off the heat or with the sauce no longer boiling; overheating can scramble it and leave the sauce grainy.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, cream, parmesan cheese, pepper, nutmeg, egg, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cream, parmesan cheese, pepper, nutmeg, egg, lemon. 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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