Skip to main content
Main

Cauliflower with Sauce

A baked cauliflower dish topped with a creamy cheese sauce and browned buttered breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Cauliflower with Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cauliflower

  1. Soak the cauliflower in cold salt water several times.

  2. Boil the cauliflower in hot salt water for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the cauliflower.

Make the cheese sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan, then stir in the flour until smooth.

  2. Add the milk and cream, stirring until combined.

  3. Mix in the grated cheese, salt, and pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower.

  2. Sprinkle with browned buttered bread crumbs and 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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, cooked until tender enough to hold the sauce.
Butter
Melts with the flour to form a roux that begins to thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk and cream into a smooth sauce when cooked in butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, thickened by the flour.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, making it smoother and heavier.
Grated cheese
Melts into the sauce to add savory flavor and a creamy, rich texture.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter until smooth. Cooking the flour in melted butter coats the starch granules so they disperse evenly; adding liquid to lumpy flour causes clumps that are hard to remove.

Swap the cauliflower

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

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

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

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMacaroni and CheeseMacaroni and Cheese102 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes