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CAULIFLOWER (a la Sauce Blanche)
Cut the stalks off close, trim the leaves, and put the cauliflower into a little vinegar and water to draw out the insects. Put it head downwards in boiling salt and water, and boil it till it is done. As cauliflowers will continue to cook, though more slowly, if left in hot water, should they be a little too soon they may be taken off the fire before they are quite ready. Take a little piece of the stalk between the finger and thumb, and if it yields easily it is done. Drain the vegetable and arrange it in a hot dish, and pour over it a little French white sauce made by adding (off the fire) the yolk of an egg to half a pint of good melted butter. Probable cost, 4d. to 6d.
A straightforward boiled cauliflower, but two phrases will mislead a modern reader: "melted butter" is not melted butter, and "half a pint" is a British half pint.
- "Melted butter" means a flour sauceIn Victorian English melted butter is a thickened white sauce — roughly 1 oz butter and 1 oz flour cooked together and let down with about 10 fl oz of water or light stock, seasoned. Actual melted butter with an egg yolk stirred in will simply split.
- Half a pintAn imperial half pint is 10 fl oz, or about 1¼ US cups. That quantity of sauce is generous for one head; two-thirds of it is usually enough.
- The egg yolk goes in off the heatThis is the hinge. Take the pan right off the fire, let it stop bubbling for a moment, then beat the yolk in — ideally slacked first with a spoonful of the hot sauce. Returned to direct heat it will scramble and grain.
- The vinegar soakFifteen to twenty minutes in cold water with a splash of vinegar or a spoonful of salt still works for a garden cauliflower harbouring insects. Supermarket heads rarely need it, and a long soak makes the curd waterlogged.
- Head downwardsImmersing it florets-down in well-salted boiling water keeps the curd from bruising. Do not cover tightly; cauliflower turns sulphurous when it steams in its own vapour.
- TimingThe book gives none. A whole medium head takes roughly 15 to 20 minutes at a bare boil; cut into florets, 5 to 10. Test the stalk as directed — the point about carry-over cooking in hot water is sound, so pull it a shade early and drain thoroughly.
- YieldOne medium head with this sauce serves three or four as a side dish. Serve it immediately; the egg-enriched sauce is liable to split or grain if held hot or reheated.
The title's à la sauce blanche marks this as one of the plainer French treatments of cauliflower. The sauce sits at the point where the English kitchen's much-mocked "melted butter" was being pulled toward French practice: a flour-and-butter base finished with a yolk off the heat is close to a sauce bâtarde, a name found in French cookery books of the period. The instruction to soak the head in vinegar and water is a reminder that cauliflowers usually came from a kitchen garden or a barrow rather than a washed and wrapped supply chain, and the "probable cost" of fourpence to sixpence is quoted, as throughout the book, for the household accounts.