Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower and Cheese

A baked cauliflower dish topped with white sauce and cheese, finished under a broiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,987 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cauliflower and Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Drain the water well and divide the cauliflower.

Assemble and brown

  1. Place it in a dish and pour the white sauce over it.

  2. Grate or slice cheese on top.

  3. Brown it under a broiler or with a salamander.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted slices.

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. Sauce + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cauliflower + cheesetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

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

  3. Cauliflower + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 provides the main vegetable texture once cooked until tender.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy coating that binds the dish together.
Cheese
Melts and browns under heat, adding savoury flavour and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Drain the cauliflower well. Water left on the cauliflower dilutes the white sauce and makes the dish watery, so it should be drained thoroughly before the sauce goes on.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sauce, cheese):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, 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.

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes