Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower and Cheese

A baked cauliflower dish topped with a cheese sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 and Cheese

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. Boil the cauliflower in salted water until tender.

  2. Drain the cauliflower.

  3. Cut the cauliflower coarsely.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, mix the butter and flour together.

  2. Stir in the hot milk until thick.

  3. Add salt and pepper.

  4. Stir in the grated cheese.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower.

  2. Sprinkle more grated cheese on top.

  3. Brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,962 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Milk + cheesetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

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

  5. Cauliflower + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together569 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, vegetable body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce that coats the cauliflower.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats with the flour.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and, with the sauce, helps the topping melt and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the hot milk into the butter and flour until thick. Flour must be cooked briefly in fat before liquid is added, and the milk should be added gradually while stirring. This keeps the sauce smooth rather than lumpy and lets the starch thicken it evenly.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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

You might also like

Macaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesCheese MakingCheese Making50 recipesCheese FrittersCheese Fritters34 recipesCheese OmeletteCheese Omelette31 recipes