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Cauliflower with Parmesan

A baked cauliflower dish topped with white sauce and grated parmesan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 in 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 heated through.

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

  3. Brown the top under a broiler or with a 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 carries the sauce and cheese.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy, smooth texture around the cauliflower.
Parmesan
Melts and browns on top, adding savory flavor and a golden crust.

The step that matters

Browning the top under a broiler or salamander. Grated parmesan browns quickly through Maillard browning and can burn before it is golden. Watch it closely and remove it as soon as the top is evenly colored.

“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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