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Cauliflower au Gratin
Boil 1 large cauliflower, drain it, and break sprigs apart. Arrange in layers in Criscoed baking dish, sprinkling each layer with cheese, seasoning it with pepper and salt, and little melted Crisco. When dish is filled pour on 1 cup white sauce, sprinkle top with crumbs and cheese, and let bake 15 minutes to brown.
A promotional-cookbook gratin from the era when Crisco was new and its makers wanted it named in every line. The method is sound; what it omits is an oven temperature and any account of the white sauce.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. A hot oven, around 400F, will colour the crumbs and cheese in fifteen minutes without drying the cauliflower, which is already cooked.
- Don't boil it softThe cauliflower gets a second cooking in the oven, so boil it only until a knife meets slight resistance. Note that the recipe boils the head whole and breaks it into sprigs afterwards, so it will need longer than loose florets would. Fully tender cauliflower collapses into wet pulp under the sauce.
- Drain it properlyWater clinging in the curds thins the white sauce and stops the top browning. Drain in a colander and let the sprigs steam dry for a few minutes before layering.
- "Criscoed"House-style verb for greasing the dish with Crisco, the hydrogenated cottonseed shortening the book exists to sell. Butter or any neutral oil does the same job, and butter is better here for flavour.
- The white sauceAssumed knowledge in a book of this kind. One cup means a standard béchamel: 1 tbsp fat, 1 tbsp flour cooked together for a minute, then 1 cup milk whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. Season it, since the cauliflower will dilute it.
- The cheeseUnspecified; in an American book of this period it was most likely a firm grated store cheese of the cheddar type. Something in the region of 4-6 oz total across the layers and the top will do.
- CrumbsDry breadcrumbs work better than fresh here; fresh ones go soggy against the sauce. Tossing them with a little melted butter first helps them brown evenly in the short bake.
- YieldOne large head serves four as a side, or three as a light main dish.
This comes from one of the Crisco recipe books Procter & Gamble published after the shortening's introduction in 1911, written to demonstrate that the new hydrogenated cottonseed fat could stand in for butter and lard in every department of cookery — hence the brand name worked into the instructions as a verb. The dish itself is older and French in origin: au gratin refers to the browned crust scraped from the dish (from gratter, to scrape), not to cheese, though cheese became the usual means of getting one. Cauliflower under white sauce is generally thought to have been a fixture of Anglo-American middle-class cookery by the late nineteenth century.