Continuing on with our look at British comfort foods (tally, bally ho!), we’ve got a corker here today. It’s cheese. But with a certain vegetable thrown into the mix.

What’s Cauliflower Cheese?

The dish consists of cauliflower florets along with melted cheese of choice, often with butter and breadcrumbs for extra oomph.

It’s a rustic British dish that Brits eat as either a lunch or dinner main course. It’s rarely a snack and never a breakfast.

It’s just another of those hearty dishes that we’ve come to love here and view as part of our national identity.

What’s odd about it is a lot of Brits hate vegetables, but will embrace the likes of cauliflower, mushy peas, or bubble and speak.

Hey ho, it’s very tasty! And we can recommend this dish as part of a cold winter’s evening or some such.

We can also recommend the awesome cauliflower cake for that, too.

What’s the History of Cauliflower Cheese?

Going way back, Europeans discovered the recipe during the French House of Lusignan rule of Cyprus circa 12th-15th centuries.

This led to the Old French term for the vegetable as “chou de Chypre”—the Cyprus cabbage.

As with quite a few “traditional” British dishes, this one likely hails back to Kythrea in Cyprus.

That town did have a British colony for quite a while, so it explains why the dish went on to make its way here.

So, Anglocypriots likely introduced the recipe to England. Whereupon we stole it for ourselves and claim governance over it.

In 1861, a book titled Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management turned up with the recipe inside it. Courtesy of journalist Isabella Beeton (1836-1865).

And its success really took off after that. Even to the point these days the dish is considered as a good baby food. Goo goo, gaa gaa.

How Do You Make Cauliflower Cheese?

Here’s smoking hot, gorgeous, hunk of the month man bloke Jamie Oliver to help you with the basics. It’s a simple dish, but important to get it right.

The ingredients you’ll need include:

A cauliflower (obviously), which you break into florets

500ml of milk

About four tablespoons of flour

About 50g of butter (if you want)

100g of whatever cheese you fancy (it’s usually strong cheddar)

2-3 tablespoons of breadcrumbs

Lashings of black peppers

So yeah, just follow the dreamboat man bloke’s instructions above as he actually knows what he’s on about. Whereas we’re not exactly cooks. Enjoy!