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Cauliflower Au Gratin

A baked cauliflower dish topped with breadcrumbs and white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and cheese are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,987 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cauliflower Au Gratin

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Steam the whole cauliflower until tender and place it on a serving dish.

Brown and serve

  1. Cover the cauliflower with buttered breadcrumbs and brown it in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

  2. Pour the medium white sauce around the cauliflower 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. Sauce + cheesetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,987 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 gives it its tender, mild body after steaming.
Buttered breadcrumbs
Butter helps the crumbs brown and crisp in the oven, forming a golden topping.
Medium white sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy coating that flows around the cauliflower.

The step that matters

Browning the breadcrumb topping. The buttered crumbs need enough oven heat to turn golden and crisp. Butter promotes browning through the Maillard reaction, but too little time leaves the topping pale and soft, while too long can scorch it.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sauce, cheese. 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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