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Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked cauliflower dish topped with cheese, breadcrumbs, and butter, served in a creamy milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cauliflower Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cauliflower until half cooked, then cut it into pieces and place them in a pie dish.

  2. Boil the milk, adding the seasoning, ½ oz. of the butter, and a pinch of nutmeg.

  3. Thicken the milk with the wholemeal flour mixed in a little cold milk or water.

Assemble and bake

  1. Stir in the cheese and pour the sauce over the cauliflower.

  2. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top, cut the remaining butter into small pieces, and place them over the breadcrumbs.

  3. Bake for 20 minutes to 1 hour, or until the cauliflower is soft.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 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 bulk of the dish and becomes soft and tender during baking.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens and carries the other flavours.
Wholemeal flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Cheese
Melts into the sauce and adds richness and savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps the breadcrumb topping brown.
Dried breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping as they toast in the oven.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk with flour. Flour mixed into hot milk without first being blended smoothly in cold liquid forms lumps, because starch granules clump before they can disperse. Mixing it with cold milk or water first lets it thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the cauliflower

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, cheese, butter, flour, nutmeg, pepper):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Cauliflowerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cheese, butter, flour, nutmeg, pepper. 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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