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Cauliflower and Shrimps
Take a cauliflower and cut off the green part, and wash it several times in salted water. Boil it gently till cooked, taking care that it remains whole. Put it aside to cool, and when it is quite cold make a hole in the center down to the bottom. Pick some shrimps till you have half a pint of them, make a good mayonnaise and, taking half of it, mix it with the shrimps. Fill the hole in the cauliflower with the shrimps and sauce, and pour the rest of the sauce over the top of the cauliflower. This dish is to be served very cold.
A cold composed salad that stands or falls on the cauliflower being cooked whole and just tender. Everything else is assembly.
- Keep it whole, keep it firmTrim the leaves and stem flush so the head sits flat, then simmer it stem-down in well-salted water, covered, 12-18 minutes for an average head. A knife should meet slight resistance at the core; a fully soft cauliflower will collapse when you hollow it out and will not hold sauce.
- Cool it properlyDrain upside down on a rack so water does not pool in the florets, then chill thoroughly. Warm cauliflower thins mayonnaise and makes it slide off.
- "Half a pint" of shrimpsThis is a volume of already-picked shrimp; in an English book of 1915 that means half an imperial pint, about 10 fl oz or 1¼ US cups, perhaps 6 oz by weight. "Pick" means to shell them, work done by hand with the tiny grey North Sea shrimp.
- Which shrimpBeing a Belgian book, the original most likely means crevettes grises, the small brown-grey shrimp of the Belgian coast, usually sold already cooked. Cooked cold-water shrimp or small salad shrimp are the closest substitute; large tiger prawns are the wrong scale and should be chopped if used.
- The mayonnaiseMake about 1 cup total: one yolk, a teaspoon of mustard or a little vinegar, and roughly 3/4 cup oil. Half is bound with the shrimp, half is poured over as a coating, so keep the pouring half slightly looser with a spoon of cream or shrimp liquor.
- Raw eggThe mayonnaise is never cooked and the dish is served cold. Use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone elderly, pregnant, very young or immune-compromised, and keep the finished dish refrigerated until it goes to the table.
- Hollowing the headCut a cylinder down through the core with a paring knife and lift it out; a narrow, deep cavity holds the shrimp better than a wide crater. The trimmings can be chopped into the shrimp mixture.
- YieldOne medium head serves four as a first course, or two as a light lunch. Cut it in wedges at the table so each portion gets filling.
The Belgian Cook Book was compiled by Mrs. Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and sold in aid of relief work. The recipes read as home cooking recalled from memory rather than restaurant practice, and this one gives no weight for the cauliflower and no boiling time. The shrimp are most likely the small grey crevettes of the North Sea coast around Ostend and Nieuwpoort, still one of the defining Belgian ingredients and still often peeled by hand; they turn up throughout Belgian cooking bound in mayonnaise, in tomatoes, in croquettes. Serving a whole boiled cauliflower cold and masked in sauce belongs to a wider European habit of treating cooked vegetables as salads.