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Cauliflower with Parmesan

Cauliflower with Parmesan is a baked cauliflower dish topped with white sauce and grated parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cauliflower and sauce work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 463 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cauliflower with Parmesan

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender, then drain it on a sieve.

  2. Trim the stalks so the cauliflower stands upright on a dish.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the cauliflower in a saucepan with the white sauce and simmer until fully cooked.

  2. Transfer the cauliflower to a serving dish, pour the sauce around it, and sprinkle grated parmesan on top.

  3. Brown the top with a broiler or salamander.

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 + 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 main body of the dish and gives it its tender, vegetable texture.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy coating that keeps the cauliflower from drying out.
Parmesan
Adds savoury, salty flavour and helps the top turn golden brown.

The step that matters

Brown the top with a broiler or salamander. Grated parmesan and the sauce brown quickly under intense direct heat through browning reactions. Watch closely, because the top can scorch before the cheese is evenly golden.

“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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