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Cream of Cauliflower Soup
1/2 cauliflower 1 pt. chicken or veal stock 1 pt. milk 1/2 cup cream 1 tablespoon Gold Medal flour 1/2 teaspoon salt Few grains cayenne Soak cauliflower head down in cold salt water one hour. Cook cauliflower in boiling salt water twenty-five minutes. Heat stock and milk. Cut off and reserve the flowerlets from the cauliflower. Rub the rest through a puree strainer and add to the hot soup. Thicken with Gold Medal flour cooked in butter, add seasonings and flowerlets and serve with Imperial sticks.
A straightforward cream soup from the era when a household strained its own purees. Two things in the original need attention: the cauliflower is cooked far longer than it needs, and the cream is listed but never mentioned again in the method.
- The creamThe ingredient list calls for 1/2 cup cream, then the instructions never place it. Stir it in at the end, off the heat or at a bare simmer, after the flour thickening has cooked through. Boiling it after the acid-free but starch-thickened base is in will not curdle it outright, but it flattens the flavour and can break the surface.
- Twenty-five minutes is too longCauliflower boiled that hard goes sulphurous and grey. Ten to twelve minutes gives florets that hold their shape for the garnish and stems soft enough to puree. Pull the reserved flowerlets out early if you want them intact.
- The hour-long soakSoaking a head face-down in cold salt water was standard advice for driving out insects lodged in the curd. Modern cauliflower rarely needs it; a rinse and a look between the florets is enough.
- UnitsA pint here is 2 cups, so 2 cups stock and 2 cups milk. Total liquid is about 4 1/2 cups with the cream.
- The unmeasured butter"Gold Medal flour cooked in butter" means a roux; use 1 tablespoon butter to the 1 tablespoon flour and cook it a minute or two before whisking in ladlefuls of the hot soup. This is a very light thickening, which is correct for the style.
- Puree strainerA conical chinois or a food mill does the same job. A blender is faster but gives a smoother, slightly gluey texture; pass it through a sieve afterwards if you want the older mouthfeel.
- Imperial sticksThin crisp bread sticks, made from a dough recipe elsewhere in books of this kind. Any plain grissini or a strip of toasted bread serves the same purpose.
- YieldRoughly four servings as a first course, three as a light supper. Salt at the end — the stock, the cooking water and the 1/2 teaspoon called for will compound.
Cook books issued by flour millers were widely circulated in early twentieth-century America, and their purpose is visible in every line: the flour is named as a branded ingredient even when only a tablespoon is wanted. The dish itself belongs to the family of cream soups — a vegetable puree loosened with stock and milk, bound with a little roux — common in the soup chapter of American household cookery from roughly the 1880s through the 1930s, when a puree strainer or sieve was ordinary kitchen equipment and a blender was not. Cauliflower was generally among the more expensive brassicas in English and American kitchens.