Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked cauliflower dish topped with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce and Parmesan cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Trim the cauliflower, cutting off the leaves evenly.

  2. Soak the cauliflower in salted water for 30 minutes.

  3. Boil plenty of salted water with a pinch of baking soda.

  4. Place the cauliflower flower-side down in the boiling water and cook for 15 minutes until slightly soft.

  5. Drain the cauliflower in a sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour over heat.

  2. Add the milk and boil while stirring constantly.

  3. Season with salt, pepper, and cayenne, then stir in most of the cheese, reserving a little.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower, sprinkle with remaining cheese, and brown it slightly 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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  4. Cauliflower + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 softens during boiling to a tender base.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the sauce, helping it feel smooth.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it boils.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury flavour and helps the top brown lightly.

The step that matters

Boil the milk while stirring constantly. Flour thickens milk only when it is stirred as it heats; if left still, lumps form and the sauce can scorch on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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

You might also like

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