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Baked Cauliflower

A baked cauliflower dish with butter sauce, bread crumbs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Cauliflower

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

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender, then split it through the middle.

  2. Lay the cut sides down in a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the drawn butter sauce over and around the cauliflower.

  2. Sift the fine bread crumbs on top.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until it begins to brown.

  4. Serve in the baking dish with cut lemon.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Cauliflower + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together223 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Cauliflower
Forms the bulk and soft, tender body of the dish.
Drawn butter sauce
Adds moisture and richness, soaking into the cauliflower as it bakes.
Fine bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden-browning topping on the surface.

The step that matters

Boil the cauliflower until tender. Overboiling makes cauliflower waterlogged and mushy, so it cannot hold its shape or absorb the sauce well. Stop once a knife slides in easily, since it will cook further in the oven.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Plumfits about as well
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, butter, sauce, bread. 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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