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Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked cauliflower dish topped with a creamy Parmesan sauce and browned under a broiler.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cauliflower Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Cook cauliflower until tender, then drain on a tammi-sieve.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix butter and flour until smooth, then add water and stir until it boils.

  2. Add a pinch of cayenne and a few drops of lemon juice to the sauce.

  3. Stir in half of the grated Parmesan and the cream into the sauce.

Assemble and brown

  1. Pour sauce over cauliflower and sprinkle remaining Parmesan on top.

  2. Brown the dish under a broiler or salamander until golden.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parmesan cheesetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  5. Cauliflower + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together179 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 holds the sauce.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour with its fat.
Flour
Thickens the water and butter into a smooth, stable sauce.
Parmesan cheese
Adds savoury flavour and forms a golden, browned crust when heated.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown the dish under a broiler or salamander until golden.. Browning relies on high surface heat driving Maillard reactions in the cheese and sauce. Too little heat leaves it pale, while too long can scorch the cheese, so watch it closely.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, lemon, parmesan cheese, cream. 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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