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To Cook Cauliflower
Let it soak in cold water one hour before cooking. Take off the outside leaves and cut the stem off close. Put it, stem-side down, into boiling water sufficient to cover it; add 1 teaspoonful of salt, and boil till tender, from one-half hour to one hour. When done it may be served in the following ways: Boiled, with Cream or Hollandaise Sauce Take up carefully so as to preserve shape. Place in dish and pour cream sauce over it.
Baked Serve in the same way with Hollandaise sauce.
Boiled, with Butter Sauce Boil, break into small pieces. Put a layer in a buttered baking-dish, sprinkle with grated cheese and a few bits of butter. Repeat till dish is filled. Pour over it a cupful of milk, seasoned with a teaspoonful of salt, and salt-spoonful of pepper. Cover with bread or cracker crumbs, and brown in oven.
The best way to cook cauliflower whole is as given above. When done cover with drawn butter, not cream sauce, and serve, or sprinkle thickly with grated cheese. Put in oven to brown. Serve either in baking-dish in which it has been browned, or remove carefully to platter and garnish with parsley.
A whole-head boiling method with three finishes printed in sequence. The headings and the instructions beneath them have slipped out of register, so read the three treatments by what they describe rather than by their labels.
- The three finishes, sorted outOne: boil whole, lift out intact, nap with cream sauce or Hollandaise. Two: boil, break into pieces, layer in a buttered dish with grated cheese and butter, add a cup of seasoned milk, crumb the top and brown. Three: boil whole, then either cover with drawn butter and serve as is, or sprinkle thickly with grated cheese and put in the oven to brown.
- Cooking timeHalf an hour to an hour gives a head soft enough to divide with a spoon. Modern practice is 6-10 minutes for florets, 12-18 for a whole head, tested with a knife tip at the core. Choose the texture you want before you start; the long boil is not an error, it is a different dish.
- The hour-long cold soakThis was to draw out insects and grit from a field-grown head. With supermarket cauliflower, 15 minutes in salted cold water is plenty, and a rinse is usually enough.
- Stem-side downWorth keeping. The dense stem takes longest to cook, and setting it downward means the head can be lifted out without the curd breaking up.
- Drawn butterNot clarified butter. In books of this period drawn butter is a thin butter sauce thickened with a little flour and hot water or cooking liquid, closer to a light velouté than to melted butter.
- Salt-spoonfulA salt spoon holds roughly a quarter teaspoon. The cupful of milk with a teaspoon of salt in the layered version is on the salty side by current taste; half that is safer, adjusted at the end.
- Oven for browningNo temperature is given. For the crumbed, milk-bound dish use 375-400F, 20-25 minutes, until set and coloured. For simply browning cheese over a cooked head, a hot oven at 450F or a few minutes under the broiler.
- YieldOne medium head serves four as a side dish, two or three if the cheese-and-milk version is the centre of a light supper.