Blanche
INGREDIENTS for large dish.- 3 cauliflowers, 1/2 pint of sauce blanche, or French melted butter, 2 oz. of butter, salt and water. AVERAGE COST, 1s. 2d.
Cleanse the cauliflowers as in the succeeding recipe, and cut the stalks off flat at the bottom; boil them until tender in salt and water, to which the above proportion of butter has been added, and be careful to take them up the moment they are done, or they will break and the appearance of the dish will be spoiled. Drain them well, CAULIFLOWER. and dish them in the shape of a large cauliflower. Have ready 1/2 pint of sauce made by recipe, pour it over the flowers, and serve hot and quickly.
TIME. Small cauliflowers, 12 to 15 minutes; large ones, 20 to 25 minutes, after the water boils.
SEASONABLE from the beginning of June to the end of September.
A Victorian way of serving boiled cauliflower under a white sauce, dressed up to look like a single giant head. Nearly everything here still works except the cooking times.
- The hinge: take them up the moment they are doneBeeton is right about the principle. A whole modern head is usually tender in about 15 to 20 minutes at a bare boil, florets in 5 to 8. Pushed to the far end of her timing you get grey, sulphurous mush that collapses when you try to arrange it.
- Sauce blanche / French melted butterNot melted butter in the American sense. It is a white sauce of butter and flour let down with water or light stock rather than milk, seasoned with salt, a little lemon and sometimes an egg yolk off the heat. Half a pint is 10 fl oz Imperial, about 1 1/4 US cups.
- Butter in the cooking waterThe 2 oz of butter goes into the salted water and leaves a gloss on the curd as the cauliflower is lifted out. Beeton gives no reason for it, and the dish will not suffer greatly if it is left out.
- Dishing in the shape of a cauliflowerTrim the stalks flat so each head sits level, then pack them curd-side-up on the platter to read as one large dome. Drain thoroughly first, upside down on a cloth, or the sauce will slide off into a puddle.
- Quantity and yieldThe recipe is headed 'for large dish'. Two large modern heads will cover most tables; three make a substantial platter.
- Cost and season1s 2d is the pre-decimal price for the whole dish. The June-to-September window reflects English open-ground growing; cauliflower is now sold year round, and winter heads behave the same in the pot.
- Keeping it whiteA squeeze of lemon or a spoonful of milk in the cooking water helps hold the colour. More useful is simply not overcooking and not covering the pan tightly, which traps the sulphur compounds against the curd.
Cauliflower reached English gardens from the Mediterranean by way of Italy and the Low Countries and was well established by the seventeenth century, though it remained a summer luxury of the walled kitchen garden until glasshouse and imported supply flattened the season. The instinct to mound several heads into one imposing dome is often associated with Victorian service a la francaise, where dishes were set out together and judged first on how they looked from across the table.