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Cauliflower with Parmezan Cheese

A cauliflower dish topped with béchamel and Parmesan, served on fried bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cauliflower with Parmezan Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Remove the leaves and stalk from the cauliflower.

  2. Boil the cauliflower in salted water until nearly tender, then drain and let dry.

Assemble and serve

  1. Prepare a dish with fried bread dipped in egg white around the rim.

  2. Place the cauliflower in the center of the dish.

  3. Heat the béchamel sauce and add the grated Parmesan cheese three minutes before serving.

  4. Pour the cheese sauce over the 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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Bread + parmesan cheesetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + parmesan cheesetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Cauliflower + parmesan cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together138 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 provides its vegetable texture once cooked until nearly tender.
Béchamel sauce
Provides a creamy, moist coating that carries the flavor over the cauliflower.
Grated parmesan cheese
Melts into the hot béchamel, adding savory, salty flavor and a richer sauce.
Egg white
Binds the fried bread to the dish rim so it holds its shape around the cauliflower.

The step that matters

Boil the cauliflower until nearly tender, then drain and let dry. Overcooking makes cauliflower soft and watery, and excess surface water thins the sauce and dilutes flavor. Draining and drying helps the sauce cling and keeps the dish from becoming soggy.

Swap the cauliflower

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

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Tomatofits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

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