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Cauliflower Au Gratin

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,962 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cauliflower Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Cut it into pieces and arrange in a small pie dish.

Top and bake

  1. Sprinkle cheese and breadcrumbs over the cauliflower. Dust with pepper and coarse sea salt. Dot with small pieces of butter on top.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve with white sauce.

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

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

  2. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + peppertop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,861 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cauliflower + cheesetop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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 gratin and cooks to a tender, soft texture.
Cheese
Melts and browns on top, adding richness and a savoury crust.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb melted butter and cheese, helping the top crisp and brown in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the flavour and encourages browning on the surface.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Browning depends on surface heat and fat. Pull the gratin too early and the cheese and breadcrumbs stay pale and soft; leave it too long and they scorch and turn bitter.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cheese, butter, 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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