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Cauliflower Salad in Red-Pepper Cases
Boil a cauliflower until tender, or use one boiled the day previous. Separate the flowerets without breaking them too small. Take medium-sized, round red peppers, cut a slice from the stem end and scoop out the inside, arrange them on leaves of crisp pale green lettuce leaves to form a nest around the peppers. Fill the cavity with the cauliflower, stems downward, and put on the top of each a spoonful of thick mayonnaise or boiled dressing. Keep on the ice until ready to serve. It is a good plan to put a spoonful of the dressing inside the peppers before putting in the cauliflower; there will then be sufficient without putting enough on the top to hide the pretty effect of the combination of color in the cauliflower and pepper.
A composed salad from the era when presentation at table mattered as much as flavour. Nothing here is difficult; the work is in the timing and the trimming.
- Don't overcook the cauliflowerOlder cookery of this kind tended to boil vegetables until quite soft, which leaves the florets liable to slump in the pepper. Boil or steam 6-8 minutes until a knife meets slight resistance, then plunge into ice water to set the colour and firmness.
- The peppers"Round red peppers" here means sweet bell or pimiento types, not chillies. Look for squat, wide-shouldered red bells that will sit upright; slice a sliver off the base if one wobbles.
- Raw or blanchedThe recipe assumes raw pepper cases. If the skins are thick, a 60-second blanch and cold plunge softens them without collapsing the walls. Drain them cut-side down on a towel or the dressing will thin out.
- Boiled dressingThe alternative to mayonnaise is a cooked dressing of egg yolk, mustard, vinegar, sugar and milk or cream, thickened over low heat. It is tangier and less rich than mayonnaise, and it holds up better in a chilled case.
- Dressing underneathThe final sentence is the point of the whole thing: a spoonful hidden in the bottom of each pepper seasons the cauliflower without masking it. Use no more than a teaspoon on top.
- Assemble lateCauliflower weeps and lettuce wilts under dressing. Boil the cauliflower and hollow the peppers ahead, refrigerate separately, and fill within an hour of serving.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities; one medium cauliflower should fill roughly four to six pepper cases, one per person as a first course or side salad.
Salads built inside a hollowed vegetable were common in American and English cookery books between roughly 1890 and 1930, when the appearance of the salad course counted for a good deal at table. Tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers and, as here, sweet red peppers were all pressed into service as edible containers, usually set on a bed of lettuce and crowned with mayonnaise or a boiled dressing. The instruction to use a cauliflower "boiled the day previous" fits a household economy in which leftovers from the hot dinner might reappear, dressed and chilled, the following day. Boiled dressing belongs to the same thrift, stretching an egg yolk with milk and sometimes flour, and it was in use before bottled mayonnaise became widely available.