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Cauliflower Au Qratin

A baked dish of boiled cauliflower topped with white sauce, cheese, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 Au Qratin

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a shallow pie dish well.

Assemble

  1. Layer in some white sauce, then add the boiled cauliflower.

  2. Sprinkle the cauliflower thickly with grated cheese and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Add more white sauce, cauliflower, and cheese until the dish is full.

  4. Ensure the top layer is white sauce.

  5. Sprinkle the top with cheese and bread crumbs, then dot with small pieces of butter.

Bake

  1. Bake until browned.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and butter 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 bulk of the dish and provides the vegetable base for the layers.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy texture that keeps the layers from drying out.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce and browns on top, adding savoury flavour and a golden crust.
Bread crumbs
Toasts on the surface, adding a crisp, browned topping.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the top brown as it melts over the surface.

The step that matters

Bake until browned. The bake is finished by colour rather than a stated time, so it is easy to under- or over-bake. Browning comes from the cheese and crumbs toasting, and the dish should be hot through so the sauce bubbles.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cheese, bread, butter, 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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