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Cauliflower Tomato Sauce

A baked cauliflower topped with tomato sauce, fried bread crumbs, lemon juice, butter, and grated cheese.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Cauliflower Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender, then drain it.

  2. Place the cauliflower on a hot dish.

Top and bake

  1. Pour the tomato sauce over the cauliflower.

  2. Sprinkle with fried bread crumbs.

  3. Add lemon juice and butter.

  4. Top with grated cheese.

  5. Put in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until hot, then 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Bread + cheesetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Tomato + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,013 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 becomes tender when boiled.
Tomato sauce
Adds moisture and acidity that flavour the cauliflower.
Grated cheese
Melts over the top and browns in the oven for a savoury crust.
Fried bread crumbs
Adds a crisp, golden texture on top.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and aids browning.

The step that matters

Drain the cauliflower well after boiling. Excess water left on boiled cauliflower dilutes the tomato sauce and makes the topping soggy instead of crisp.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Plumfits better
  2. Avocadofits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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