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Stewed Cauliflower (Gently thirty minutes or until)
gently thirty minutes, or until the cauliflower is tender. When done, lift carefully from the water; if in a basket, simply turn it out. If in a cloth, remove the cloth and stand the cauliflower in a round, shallow dish, stems downward. If two heads are cooked, place them in a platter, stems to the centre of the platter. Pour over Cream Sauce and serve.
Cauliflower cooked this way may be served as a separate course by itself.
This is the tail end of a whole-head cauliflower recipe — the page picks up mid-sentence, after the head has been trimmed, tied in a cloth or set in a wire basket, and lowered into boiling salted water. What survives is the handling and serving, which is where the dish is usually lost.
- The missing first halfThe page picks up after the head has been prepared and put into the water; period practice for whole cauliflower generally involved trimming the leaves and the thickest part of the core and boiling in salted water, though none of that survives on this page. What the text does make clear is that the cloth or basket exists so the head can be lifted out without collapsing.
- Thirty minutes is far too longThirty minutes is likely too long -- A whole medium head of modern cauliflower is usually tender in 12 to 18 minutes; test the stem with a skewer. Held to half an hour it goes grey, sulphurous and slack.
- Uncovered, and not too fastNot too fast -- "Gently" means a steady simmer; a hard rolling boil knocks the florets off the core, which defeats the point of serving it whole. Many cooks also leave the pan uncovered to reduce the smell of overcooked cauliflower, though the recipe says nothing either way.
- Substitute for the clothIf you have no muslin or steamer basket, a deep colander set inside a wide pot works, or simply lower the head into the water on a wide skimmer and lift it out the same way. Two spatulas and a steady hand will also do it.
- Cream SauceA basic white sauce: roughly 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour and a cup of milk or thin cream, cooked out for a few minutes so it does not taste of raw flour, seasoned with salt and a little white pepper. Have it ready before the cauliflower comes out, since the head cools fast and sheds water.
- Drain properlyStand the drained head stem-down for a minute or two before saucing. Water trapped between the florets will thin the sauce into a puddle at the base of the dish.
- YieldOne medium head serves three or four as a side, two as the separate course the recipe suggests. Two heads on a platter, stems to the centre, will serve six to eight.
Serving cauliflower whole under a white sauce, as its own course rather than crowded onto the meat plate, was a habit associated with French service and appears in American cookery writing of the later nineteenth century. Wire boiling baskets and cloths were sold for retrieving large, fragile items intact from a deep pot. The long cooking time may reflect a different vegetable rather than carelessness, if market heads then ran larger and coarser-stemmed. The instruction to arrange two heads stems to the centre of the platter shows that the appearance of the dish as carried to the table mattered.