Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked cauliflower dish topped with cheese, breadcrumbs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cauliflower Au Gratin

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Place the cauliflower in a hot dish.

Make the sauce and assemble

  1. Mix 1 oz. of grated cheese with the white sauce and pour it over the cauliflower.

  2. Sprinkle a few bread crumbs on top, followed by the remaining cheese and small pieces of butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden and serve immediately.

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

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

  2. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cauliflower + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 tender vegetable base that the sauce and topping cover.
White sauce
Provides a creamy, moist layer that coats the cauliflower and keeps it from drying out.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce and browns on top, adding richness and savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat that helps the top brown and gives a rich finish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the surface.

The step that matters

Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden. Browning depends on surface heat and time. Too little heat leaves the top pale and the sauce underdeveloped, while too much can scorch the crumbs before the sauce heats through.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes