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Cardoons with Veloute Sauce
Cut the leaves of the cardoons into slices, with the exception of the tough hollow ones, and remove all the prickles. Place the thickest leaves in a saucepan of boiling water, boil them for a few minutes, and then put in the leaves of the heart; trim the middle stocks into large olives, and after blanching them put them in also. Rub a piece of the cardoons in cold water in order to determine whether the slime will come off easily, and if so, throw in the lot and rub them well. When quite clean, put the cardoons in white sauce, and boil them. Then remove the cardoons, put them in a stewpan with some stockbroth, and boil them quickly. When cooked, put them on a hot dish, drain them, pour over some hot veloute sauce, and serve. If preferred, French melted butter can be used in place of the sauce veloute.
A period treatment of a vegetable that has largely dropped out of American cooking, written for a brigade that already knew how to handle it. The gaps are in the prep, not the sauce.
- The "white sauce" is a blanc, not béchamelThe "white sauce" here is most likely a blanc rather than a béchamel — cardoons discolour on contact with air and cook grey unless boiled in a blanc: water whisked with a little flour, salt and lemon juice or vinegar. Reserve the actual sauce for the finish.
- Strings and pricklesTrim the spines off the ribs with scissors, then peel the outer stringy fibres from each rib with a vegetable peeler, exactly as you would tough celery. Drop each piece into acidulated water as you go.
- "Slime" and rubbingThe instruction to rub a piece in cold water is a doneness test for the outer skin, which loosens after the first boil and can then be rubbed away with a cloth. It is not a hygiene step.
- "Trim into large olives"Turned pieces about the size and shape of a large olive, roughly 1½ inches. Plain 2-inch lengths cook the same and waste less.
- TimingThe original gives none. Cardoons are stubborn: expect 45 to 90 minutes in the blanc depending on age and thickness, until a knife meets no resistance. Undercooked cardoon is woody and unpleasant.
- VeloutéA blond roux slackened with white stock — veal or chicken — simmered and strained. The stockbroth boil in the recipe is a flavouring step before saucing; keep it brief once the ribs are already tender.
- French melted butterThe period term for beurre fondu, warm butter mounted with a spoonful of water and a little lemon, not simply melted butter poured over.
- YieldA single large head of cardoon trims down hard — reckon on serving two to three as a vegetable course.
Cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) is the thistle from which the globe artichoke was bred, grown for its blanched leaf ribs rather than its flower bud. It was a standard winter vegetable in France, Spain and northern Italy, and its presence in a Waldorf-Astoria book of the 1890s reflects a kitchen staffed and menued along French lines, where cardoons appeared as a garnish or a separate vegetable course in the classical repertoire. It largely disappeared from American markets in the twentieth century, surviving mainly in Italian-American households, where fried cardoons are still a traditional Christmas dish. The plant's dried flowers have also long been used in the Iberian peninsula as a vegetable coagulant for sheep's-milk cheeses.