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Cauliflower and Cheese
1 cauliflower. 1/2 lb. grated cheese. 1/2 teaspoon red pepper. 1 cup cream sauce. 1 tablespoon butter.
Boil cauliflower; when cold cut in pieces. Put in dish alternately with cheese and pepper. Pour over this cream sauce, add buttered bread crumbs and bake ten minutes.
CAULIFLOWER AND MUSHROOMS SERVED IN GREEN PEPPERS. 1 head cauliflower. 1 can mushrooms. 1 cup cream sauce. 8 green peppers. Cook cauliflower as directed above. Saute mushrooms in butter. Have cup cream sauce ready. Cut cauliflower into small pieces, add mushrooms and sauce. Fill green peppers, after having put them in hot water for ten minutes. Put in pan and run into oven to season.
Two related dishes on one page: a straightforward cauliflower gratin and a stuffed-pepper variation built from the same components. Both assume the cauliflower and the cream sauce are already made, so the oven time is short by design.
- No oven temperature givenTen minutes only makes sense in a hot oven, since everything in the dish is already cooked. Bake at 400F until the sauce bubbles at the edges, then run it under the broiler for a minute if the crumbs have not coloured.
- Cream sauceThis means a plain white sauce: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, and a cup of milk or thin cream, cooked until it coats a spoon. One cup is scant for a whole head plus half a pound of cheese; a cup and a half gives a gratin that is not dry.
- Red pepperIn 1920 usage this is cayenne, not paprika and not chilli flakes. Half a teaspoon through a single gratin is assertive; a quarter teaspoon suits most modern palates, and the dish is not meant to be hot so much as sharpened.
- Boil the cauliflower shortPeriod recipes commonly call for boiling cauliflower far longer than modern taste prefers. Take it out while a knife meets slight resistance, around 6 to 8 minutes for florets, or it will disintegrate when you cut and layer it. Cooling it, as directed, does make it easier to cut cleanly.
- The cheeseHalf a pound of grated cheese is roughly 2 cups. A firm cheddar or a mix of cheddar and Gruyere behaves best; pre-shredded cheese with anti-caking starch will go grainy in the sauce.
- Buttered crumbsThe tablespoon of butter in the ingredient list is for these, not for the dish. Toss about half a cup of dry breadcrumbs in melted butter until they are evenly coated, then scatter over the top.
- Canned mushroomsThe second dish assumes tinned mushrooms, standard pantry stock at the time. Drain and pat them dry before sauteing, or substitute 8 oz fresh mushrooms cooked hard in butter until their liquid has gone, otherwise the filling loosens the sauce.
- "Run into oven to season"The parboiled peppers are still raw in the middle after ten minutes in hot water. Give them 20 to 25 minutes at 375F, covered for the first half, so the pepper walls soften along with the filling heating through.
- YieldThe gratin serves 4 to 6 as a side. The stuffed peppers, at eight, serve four as a light main course.
Mary A. Wilson published this book in 1920, and it reads throughout like a manual for a cook who is expected to build dishes out of a small stock of standard preparations. The cream sauce here is not a recipe but an assumption: American domestic-science cookery of the period taught white sauce as a foundation to be made in quantity and deployed across vegetables, fish and croquettes alike, which is why Wilson can call for a cup of it without explanation. Cauliflower baked with cheese and crumbs is the English and French gratin naturalised into that system, while the second dish, stuffed green peppers, was a distinctly American enthusiasm in the 1910s and 1920s, when peppers were cheap in season and canned mushrooms made a filling seem luxurious for very little money.