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Cauliflower with Tomato Sauce

A cauliflower dish topped with a tomato and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and tomato work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 91 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Cauliflower with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Steam the cauliflower until tender.

  2. In a saucepan, mix the flour with the cream.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the strained stewed tomatoes and thicken the mixture.

  2. Boil for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the hot cauliflower.

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 + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  4. Flour + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,065 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cauliflower + creamtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together284 recipes

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

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 is cooked tender by steaming.
Flour
Thickens the tomato mixture into a smooth sauce when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the sauce.
Strained stewed tomatoes
Provide the main flavour and acidity, and the liquid base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture. Flour must be mixed smoothly with the cream before the tomatoes go in, otherwise lumps form. Boiling the sauce for a few minutes lets the starch swell and thicken fully.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cauliflower, cream, flour):

  1. Turnipfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, cream, flour. 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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