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CAULIFLOWER, CURRIED (au Gratin)
Boil a good-sized cauliflower, previously trimmed and washed in salted water. When done, drain, and place in a fire-proof dish; season with pepper and salt, and cover over completely with a well-reduced white sauce flavoured with curry powder. Sprinkle with finely-grated cheese and bread-crumbs; place tiny bits of butter here and there on top, and bake in a very hot oven for ten minutes, so as to brown the surface. Serve very hot, with boiled rice. Probable cost, 6d.
A late-Victorian gratin that survives intact into modern cooking, provided the cauliflower is not boiled to the collapse the period preferred. The sauce needs to be thick enough to cling before it goes over the head.
- "A very hot oven"Take this as 450F, or the top of the range if your oven runs cooler. The dish is only in for ten minutes and nothing needs to cook through, so the heat is purely for browning the crumbs and cheese. A grill or broiler for two to three minutes does the same job with less risk of drying the sauce.
- Don't overboilVictorian instructions of this kind often left vegetables softer than modern taste prefers, and this one says only "boil... when done." Eight to ten minutes in well-salted boiling water, until a knife meets slight resistance at the stem, is enough. It gets a further ten minutes in a hot oven, and waterlogged florets will thin the sauce.
- Drain hardThe hinge of the dish. Cauliflower holds a surprising amount of water in its head; leave it in a colander for several minutes, stem-side down, and pat it dry. Any residual water pools under the sauce and turns the gratin to soup.
- "Well-reduced white sauce"A bechamel cooked down until it coats the back of a spoon heavily, thicker than you would serve as a pouring sauce. Roughly half a pint for one large head. It thins slightly in the oven, so err on the stiff side.
- Curry powderCommercial curry powders of the period were generally milder and more turmeric-forward than modern blends. A teaspoon or so of a mild modern powder is in the spirit of it; anything hot and cumin-heavy will overwhelm the cheese. Fry the powder briefly in the roux butter rather than stirring it into finished sauce, which leaves a raw, dusty taste.
- CheeseThe recipe says only "finely-grated cheese"; Parmesan or a dry Cheddar both suit. Mix it with the crumbs rather than layering, so the crumbs brown instead of steaming under a cheese crust.
- Whole or in floretsThe original keeps the head whole, which looks handsome but makes serving awkward and leaves the interior underseasoned. Breaking it into large florets after boiling gives more surface for the sauce.
- Yield and costOne good-sized cauliflower serves four as a light main with the rice, six as a side. The "probable cost, 6d." is sixpence in pre-decimal currency, the kind of price note Cassell's routinely attached to its entries for the benefit of household budgeting.
Curry powder reached the English kitchen as a domesticated shorthand for Indian cooking, and it had become a familiar store-cupboard seasoning, used to lift eggs, rabbit, cold mutton and, as here, boiled vegetables. What makes this entry characteristic of Cassell's is the doubling up: a French gratin treatment, a curry flavouring and boiled rice on the side, three culinary registers in one small dish, none of them treated as remarkable. Cauliflower itself was a prestige vegetable in Victorian gardens, difficult to grow well and prone to bolting, and the book specifies a good-sized head, treating it as the centrepiece rather than an accompaniment. The instruction to serve rice alongside is the only nod to the curry's origins, and follows the standard British convention of the day, in which rice was a plain boiled bed for anything spiced.