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Scalloped Cauliflower

A baked cauliflower dish topped with a butter, milk, breadcrumb, and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Scalloped Cauliflower

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, about 20 minutes.

  2. Carefully break the cauliflower into pieces and arrange in a buttered baking dish.

  3. Sprinkle the cauliflower with salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the milk and bread crumbs; simmer until the crumbs absorb the liquid.

  3. Stir in the beaten egg and remove from heat before the egg cooks.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower.

  2. Dust with a few bread crumbs on top.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Cauliflower + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,113 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (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 tender base that the sauce covers and bakes over.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as the crumbs absorb it.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the milk to thicken the sauce and form a light browned topping.
Egg
Binds the sauce and helps it set into a custard-like texture when heated gently.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce and keeps the dish from sticking.

The step that matters

Stir in the beaten egg off the heat. Egg proteins set and curdle when overheated, so removing the pan before the egg cooks keeps the sauce smooth and lets it bind gently rather than turning grainy.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, bread, egg, 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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