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Cauliflower with Cheese Sauce

Cauliflower boiled and topped with a cheese sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 with Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Place the cooked cauliflower in a deep dish.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk.

  2. Stir in the butter and flour until thickened.

  3. Add the grated cheese, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  4. Pour the cheese sauce over the cauliflower.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 main body of the dish and becomes tender when boiled.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with the butter.
Grated cheese
Adds savory flavor and creamy body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour until thickened. Flour must be cooked with the fat and hot milk and stirred continuously so starch granules swell evenly. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, and overheating or uneven stirring can cause lumps.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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