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Cauliflower a LA Sauce

A boiled cauliflower served with a béchamel sauce, Parmesan cheese, and fried bread garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Cauliflower a LA Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove leaves and stalk from cauliflower and boil in salted water until nearly done. Drain well.

  2. Prepare a dish with fried bread dipped in egg white around the rim.

  3. Place the cauliflower in the center of the dish.

Make the sauces

  1. In a saucepan, combine broth, vinegar, and butter. Heat until boiling and thickened.

  2. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower.

  3. Stir grated Parmesan cheese into the béchamel sauce and pour it over the cauliflower just before serving.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cauliflower + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together888 recipes

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

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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, cooked until nearly done so it stays tender.
Butter
Adds richness and helps give the broth-based sauce a smooth, glossy body.
Béchamel sauce
Provides a creamy, thick layer that carries the flavour of the Parmesan over the cauliflower.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury, salty depth and browns lightly when heated against the sauce.

The step that matters

Drain the cauliflower well. Excess water left on the cauliflower dilutes the sauces and makes them thin and watery, so it should be drained thoroughly before it is placed in the dish.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, butter, bread, egg, sauce, parmesan cheese):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, bread, egg, sauce, parmesan cheese. 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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