Home › The Principles of Cookery › Cauliflower Sauce
Cauliflower Sauce
Make a pint of good white sauce. Boil a cauliflower till tender, drain, and chop it small, then stir it into the boiling sauce, let it remain over the fire for a minute or two, and serve. Time, from twenty to thirty minutes. Probable cost, from 4d. to 6d. per head. Sufficient for a pint and a half of sauce.
A simple compound sauce: béchamel loosened with chopped boiled cauliflower, meant to be spooned over the boiled meat or fish it accompanies. The whole thing hinges on not letting the cauliflower sit in hot liquid any longer than it must.
- White sauce"Good white sauce" here means a milk-based white sauce of the b u00e9chamel type: butter and flour cooked together, then a pint of liquid whisked in and simmered until it coats a spoon. Proportions of roughly equal butter and flour to the pint are usual, though Victorian versions differ and some use veal stock or cream alongside the milk. An Imperial pint is a little under 2½ US cups.
- The pint is ImperialAn Imperial pint is 20 fl oz, not 16. If you work in US measures, that is a little under 2½ cups of milk; the finished yield of "a pint and a half" is about 3½ to 3¾ US cups.
- Cook the cauliflower separately and brieflyBoil or steam the florets only until a knife meets slight resistance, 5 to 7 minutes for small pieces. Cauliflower held at a simmer past that point turns grey, sulphurous and watery, and the recipe keeps it in the sauce only "a minute or two".
- Drain it properlyCauliflower carries a great deal of water. Drain in a colander and let it steam dry for a minute before chopping, or the sauce will thin as it stands.
- Chop, do not puréeThe recipe gives no size for "chop it small"; a rough dice will do, and the sauce should be flecked and slightly textured rather than smooth. A blender gives a different sauce entirely.
- TimingThe twenty to thirty minutes appears to cover making the sauce and cooking the vegetable together. The recipe stirs the cauliflower into boiling sauce and leaves it over the fire only a minute or two before serving.
- Yield and servingAbout 3½ to 3¾ US cups. The recipe gives no number of servings and names no dish to serve it with, though a sauce of this kind would suit boiled or poached meat and fish; it also works over baked ham or as a base for a gratin under breadcrumbs and cheese.
Cauliflower reached English kitchens from the Mediterranean by way of Italy and the Low Countries and was well established in market gardens by the eighteenth century; by the time Cassell's was compiled it was a staple of the kitchen garden and cheap enough for the fourpence to sixpence a head quoted here. The recipe belongs to a whole family of Victorian white sauces built on the same béchamel base — parsley, egg, oyster, celery, onion — each named for whatever was stirred into it, and printed one after another in the sauce chapters of the period. That formula reflects how these books were used: learn the mother sauce once, then vary it with whatever the garden or fishmonger offered.