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Boiled Cauliflower with Tomato Sauce

A boiled cauliflower served with a tomato sauce thickened with butter, flour, and cracker dust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Tomato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 20,633 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Boiled Cauliflower with 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 the cauliflower

  1. Boil the cauliflower until tender.

  2. Chop the cauliflower coarsely.

  3. Press the chopped cauliflower into a bowl or mold to hold its shape.

  4. Place the shaped cauliflower on a heatproof dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cook the butter and flour together until smooth.

  2. Add the strained tomato juice and stewed onion to the saucepan.

  3. Stir the mixture until smooth.

  4. Add cracker dust to the sauce to thicken it.

  5. Season the sauce with salt, sugar, and paprika.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the molded cauliflower.

  2. Set the dish in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 10 minutes.

  3. Serve in the dish it was cooked in.

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. Tomato + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Cauliflower + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together935 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Cauliflower + tomatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together91 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 of the dish and, once pressed and chopped, holds the molded shape.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flour so it cooks smoothly without lumps.
Flour
Thickens the butter and tomato mixture into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Strained tomato juice
Provides the liquid base and tomato flavour of the sauce.
Cracker dust
Absorbs liquid and adds body, further thickening the sauce.

The step that matters

Cooking the butter and flour until smooth. Flour must be cooked into the fat before liquid is added; if it is not stirred smooth, lumps form and the sauce tastes raw and floury.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Mustardfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cauliflower, sauce, butter, flour, onion, sugar. 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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