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Cauliflowers with Parmesan Cheese

A baked cauliflower dish topped with white sauce, Parmesan cheese, clarified butter, and toasted breadcrumbs.

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

Cauliflowers with Parmesan Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Remove all green leaves and cut the stalks off the cauliflowers so they stand upright.

  2. Boil the cauliflowers until tender but not breaking, then drain well.

Assemble

  1. Arrange the cauliflowers to resemble one whole cauliflower on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the white sauce over the tops of the cauliflowers.

  3. Sprinkle grated Parmesan cheese over the sauce, then drizzle with clarified butter.

  4. Add another layer of Parmesan cheese and cover with fine bread crumbs.

  5. Moisten the bread crumbs with more clarified butter and brown them.

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. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Parmesan cheese + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together577 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  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

Cauliflowers
Form the bulk of the dish and hold the sauce and topping.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy layer that softens the cauliflower's surface.
Parmesan cheese
Melts and browns under heat, adding savoury, salty flavour.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and helps the bread crumbs brown evenly.
Fine bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping when browned with butter.

The step that matters

Brown the bread crumbs. Bread crumbs moistened with clarified butter brown quickly under heat. Too little heat or too long a wait lets the cheese and sauce dry out or the crumbs burn before they colour evenly.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, parmesan 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.

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