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Cauliflower Salad, Egg Garnish
Separate a cauliflower into flowerets and boil in salted water until tender, not longer. Drain carefully. Season with oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and a sprinkling of chopped tarragon leaves (or use tarragon vinegar). Arrange symmetrically in an earthen bowl, having the upper surface level. Let stand to become thoroughly chilled, then turn on to a serving-dish; the shape of the mould will be retained. Cover with mayonnaise dressing or Sauce Tartare, and surround with lengthwise quarters of hard-boiled eggs.
A straightforward composed salad from the era when vegetables were routinely moulded and unmoulded for the table. The whole effect depends on the cauliflower being cooked to exactly the right point and packed tightly while still warm.
- Don't overcook"Until tender, not longer" is the hinge. Six to eight minutes in well-salted boiling water is usually enough for medium florets; they should yield to a knife tip but keep their edges. Soft cauliflower will slump instead of holding the shape of the bowl.
- Dress while warmThe book does not say so, but the oil-and-vinegar seasoning should go on while the florets are still hot. Warm vegetables absorb a vinaigrette; cold ones only wear it.
- Proportions for the dressingNo quantities are given. Three parts oil to one of vinegar is a common proportion, which works out to roughly 6 tablespoons oil and 2 of vinegar for a medium head.
- The earthen bowlAny smooth-sided bowl of about a quart will do. Pack the florets in stem-up, press down firmly so the top is flat, and chill at least two hours; a plate weighted with a can helps the mould hold together.
- TarragonFresh tarragon is the intent — about a tablespoon chopped. Tarragon vinegar was widely available and is still sold; if you use it, it replaces the plain vinegar rather than being added to it.
- Sauce TartareSauce Tartare of this kind is mayonnaise with chopped pickles, capers and herbs folded in, not the sweet commercial tartar sauce sold for fried fish.
- YieldA medium head serves four as a first course, with three or four eggs quartered around the base.
Cauliflower salads dressed with oil and vinegar and masked with mayonnaise belong to the French-influenced side of American cookery that long dominated printed menus, when a vegetable was expected to arrive at table in a deliberate shape rather than a heap. The unmoulding trick here — packing dressed florets into a bowl, chilling them, and turning them out with the curve intact — is the same logic behind the aspics and timbales that fill contemporary books, achieved without gelatine simply by pressure and cold. Tarragon, or the tarragon vinegar that stood in for it out of season, is often associated with egg-and-mayonnaise cookery in this tradition, and a ring of hard-boiled egg quarters was a common garnish.