Home › Vegetables › Escalloped Cauliflower
Escalloped Cauliflower
Boil till very tender. Drain well and cut in small pieces; put it in layers with fine chopped egg and this dressing: 1/2 pint of milk thickened over boiling water with 2 tablespoonfuls of flour and seasoned with 2 teaspoonfuls of salt, 1 of white pepper, and 2 ounces of butter. Put grated bread over the top, dot it with small bits of butter, and place it in the oven to heat thoroughly and brown. Serve in the same dish in which it was baked.
A plain white-sauce gratin from the era when vegetables were boiled soft before they were baked. The seasoning is the part that needs a modern hand.
- SaltTwo teaspoonfuls of salt in one cup of milk is very heavy by current taste. Start with half a teaspoon and adjust after the sauce has thickened.
- Half a pint of milkOne cup. Thickened with 2 tablespoons flour and enriched with 2 ounces (4 tablespoons) butter, it makes a medium-bodied sauce.
- "Over boiling water"A double boiler, which was standard for milk sauces before thermostatic burners. A heavy saucepan over low heat works as well provided the flour and butter are cooked together for a minute before the milk goes in.
- Boiling the cauliflower'Very tender' by the standards of the day means considerably longer than modern taste wants, and leaves the florets waterlogged. Eight to ten minutes in salted water is enough, since the gratin gets further cooking in the oven. Drain thoroughly and let it steam dry, or the sauce will thin.
- The eggHard-boiled and finely chopped; the recipe gives no number, but two or three eggs suit a medium head of cauliflower.
- Grated breadFresh breadcrumbs grated from a stale loaf, coarser and softer than commercial dried crumbs. Toss them with the dotted butter rather than adding it separately if you want an even brown.
- OvenThe original gives no temperature or time, only 'place it in the oven to heat thoroughly and brown.' 375-400F for 20 to 25 minutes will do it, with a minute or two under the broiler if the top is pale.
- YieldOne medium head serves four as a side dish. Use a shallow baking dish you are willing to bring to the table, as the recipe directs.
Escalloped dishes -- layered with sauce and crumbs and browned in the oven -- were a common American treatment for cooked vegetables in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The technique addressed a practical problem: cauliflower boiled by the methods of the day arrived at the table waterlogged and drab, and a white sauce with chopped hard-boiled egg gave it both body and colour.