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Cauliflower Au Gratin

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parmesan cheese and gruyere cheese match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 152 recipes. Both carry ethyl 2-methylbutyrate, which smells fruity, apple. The science ↓

Cauliflower Au Gratin

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Carefully divide the cauliflower into sprigs.

  2. Coat each sprig with butter and rebuild the cauliflower.

  3. Top with more butter, sprinkle with Parmesan and brown crumbs.

  4. Place in a baking dish and heat in the oven until golden brown.

  5. For a rich sauce, combine cream, pepper, salt, and cayenne in a saucepan and reduce until thick.

  6. Stir in grated Parmesan and Gruyere, then add egg yolks.

  7. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower, garnish with egg and bread crumbs, and bake for 15 minutes.

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. Parmesan cheese + gruyere cheesetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parmesan cheese, bread, cream, pepper, egg, gruyere cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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