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Cauliflower with White Sauce

Cauliflower cooked in butter, salt, and pepper, then topped with white sauce and croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cauliflower and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,113 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Cauliflower with White Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the green stalks and divide the cauliflowers into quarters.

  2. Pick out all the little leaves with a knife.

  3. Wash the cauliflowers and place them in boiling water with butter, salt, and pepper.

Cook and shape

  1. Once cooked, drain the cauliflowers on a sieve.

  2. Fill a round-bottomed quart basin with the cauliflowers and turn out onto a flat dish.

Serve

  1. Pour a good amount of white sauce over the cauliflowers.

  2. Garnish with croutons and serve.

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

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

  2. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Cauliflower + saucetop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Cauliflower + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Butter and sauce 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 main body of the dish, becoming tender when simmered in water.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the cooking liquid and vegetables.
White sauce
Adds moisture and creamy richness that coats the cooked cauliflower.

The step that matters

Wash the cauliflowers and place them in boiling water. Cooking cauliflower until just tender matters: undercooked florets stay firm and bitter, while overcooked ones turn soft and watery and release sulfurous odours. Draining well on a sieve keeps the dish from becoming soggy under the sauce.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, sauce. 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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