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Cauliflowers with Cheese

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,113 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflowers with Cheese

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 the cauliflower

  1. Clean and boil the cauliflowers until almost done, then drain them.

  2. Break off the branches and layer them in a buttered pie dish.

Layer and bake

  1. Sprinkle with cayenne and salt, then add some cheese.

  2. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  3. Pour a little white sauce over the top, cover with breadcrumbs, and brown in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

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

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

  2. Parmesan cheese + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,322 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Parmesan cheese + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Cauliflower + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cauliflowers
Form the main body of the dish, becoming tender as they are boiled and layered.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess that keeps the layers from drying out in the oven.
Grated parmesan cheese
Melts into the layers and browns on the surface, adding savoury flavour.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden topping when browned in the oven.

The step that matters

Boil the cauliflowers until almost done. Cauliflower keeps softening in the oven, so boiling it fully here leaves it mushy by the time the top browns. Draining well also stops excess water from thinning the sauce.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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