Name: Cauliflower a LA Bechemel
Ingredients: 1 medium cauliflower; ½ cup coarse sea salt (for soaking); 1 cup Bechemel sauce

Why it works: Cauliflower and sauce work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 463 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cauliflower a LA Bechemel

Ingredients

1 medium cauliflower
½ cup coarse sea salt (for soaking)
1 cup Bechemel sauce

Directions

Prepare

Remove the leaves and trim the stalk of the cauliflower.
Soak the cauliflower head down in cold water with ½ cup of coarse sea salt for 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

Drain and cook the cauliflower head up in boiling salted water for 20 minutes.
Drain again and place in a vegetable dish.
Pour 1 cup of Bechamel 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.

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 a tender, mild vegetable base.
Bechamel sauce: Adds creamy richness and moisture that coats the cauliflower.

“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.