Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower and Cheese

Boiled cauliflower topped with white sauce and cheese, then broiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cauliflower and Cheese

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Drain the water well and divide the cauliflower.

Assemble and brown

  1. Place it in a dish and pour the white sauce over it.

  2. Grate or slice cheese on top.

  3. Brown it under a broiler or with a salamander.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted sippets.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cauliflower + cheesetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Cauliflower + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 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 turns tender when boiled, giving a soft texture under the sauce.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creaminess, coating the cauliflower and binding it to the cheese topping.
Cheese
Melts and browns on top under heat, adding savoury flavour and a golden crust.
Butter
Adds fat and helps the top brown evenly and richly.

The step that matters

Drain the cauliflower well. Water left on the cauliflower dilutes the white sauce and makes the dish watery, so the sauce will not cling or set properly.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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