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Tomato and Cauliflower Salad
Scald and peel firm tomatoes and cut into quarters. Arrange them in a circle on lettuce leaves, with a floweret of cold cooked cauliflower, which has been marinated for half an hour in French dressing, between the quarters. Serve with a cream dressing.
A composed salad rather than a tossed one, and it depends entirely on the cauliflower being properly cooked and properly seasoned before it reaches the plate.
- The marinade is the pointCold cauliflower is bland and absorbs dressing slowly. The half hour in French dressing is not optional garnish-work; without it the florets taste of nothing beside the tomato.
- French dressing, 1900s senseSimply oil and vinegar with salt and pepper, whisked or shaken; period books give ratios ranging from roughly two to four parts oil to one of vinegar. It does not mean the sweet orange bottled dressing sold under that name today.
- Cream dressingIn books of this period this is a boiled dressing thickened with egg and flour and finished with cream, or in simpler versions cream sharpened with lemon or vinegar and salt. Either is heavier than the marinade, which is why the cauliflower is dressed separately first.
- Scalding tomatoesThirty to sixty seconds in boiling water, then straight into cold, and the skins slip off. Any longer and the outer flesh turns to pulp and the quarters will not hold their shape.
- Cook the cauliflower shortThe florets should be tender but still firm enough to stand up as separate pieces — six to eight minutes in salted boiling water, then cooled quickly. Cauliflower boiled soft collapses into the dressing.
- Assembly and temperatureEverything should be cold before it goes on the lettuce, and the salad should be built shortly before serving. Cut tomatoes release liquid onto the lettuce, the more so once dressing touches them.
- YieldReckon one medium tomato and three or four florets per person; the original gives no quantities.
Meatless cookery of the early twentieth century leaned hard on the composed salad, and this is a fair specimen of the type: vegetables cooked, cooled, dressed and arranged in a deliberate pattern rather than heaped in a bowl. The circle of tomato quarters alternating with cauliflower florets belongs to the same decorative impulse that produced moulded aspics and stuffed tomato cases, and it reflects a period in which the appearance of a dish carried much of the argument for eating it. Cauliflower was often regarded as something of a prestige vegetable, generally said to be dearer than cabbage and frequently served with a rich sauce; here it receives both a marinade and a cream dressing.