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Escaloped Cauliflower
Boil till very tender, drain well and cut in small pieces; put it in layers with fine chopped egg and this dressing: half it in layers with fine chopped egg and this dressing: half pint of milk thickened over boiling water, with two table-spoons of flour and seasoned with two tea-spoons of salt; one of white pepper and two ounces of butter; put grated bread over the top, dot it with small bits of butter, and place it in the oven to heat thoroughly and brown. Serve in same dish in which it was baked . This is a good way to use common heads. A nicer way is to boil them , then place them whole in a buttered dish with stems down.
Make a sauce with a cup of bread-crumbs beaten to froth with two table-spoons of melted butter and three of cream or milk, one wellbeaten egg and salt and pepper to taste. Pour this over the cauliflower, cover the dish tightly and bake six minutes in a quick oven , browning them nicely. Serve as above.
Two versions of the same dish: a layered gratin for coarse or broken heads, and a whole baked head with a soufflé-like crumb sauce. Both assume a cauliflower boiled soft in the nineteenth-century manner, which is where most of the adjustment is needed.
- Do not boil it to death"very tender" in nineteenth-century recipes generally meant a long boil, which leaves cauliflower waterlogged and sulphurous. Cook florets six to eight minutes, or a whole head ten to twelve, until a knife meets slight resistance, then drain thoroughly and let the steam dry off before saucing.
- Half a pint of milkOne cup. Thickened over boiling water means a double boiler, which prevents scorching but takes ten to fifteen minutes; a heavy saucepan over low heat with constant whisking does it in three.
- The salt is out of proportionTwo teaspoons of salt in a sauce built on one cup of milk is several times what a modern palate wants, particularly with buttered crumbs on top. Start with half a teaspoon and correct at the end.
- Chopped eggHard-boiled, cooled and finely chopped — the recipe assumes it. Two eggs are enough for a medium head.
- Grated breadDry breadcrumbs grated from a stale loaf, coarser than commercial crumbs and much better here. Panko is the closest supermarket equivalent.
- Oven temperaturesThe book gives no temperature for the layered version; "heat thoroughly and brown" suggests a moderate oven, around 375F for twenty to twenty-five minutes. A "quick oven" for the second version is usually taken as about 400 to 425F.
- Six minutes is optimisticThe whole-head version has raw beaten egg in its sauce and a solid boiled head underneath. Even in a hot oven, allow fifteen to twenty minutes covered, then uncover to brown, and check that the sauce is set rather than trusting the clock.
- Crumbs beaten to frothThe instruction is loose: easiest is to beat the egg to a froth first, then fold in the crumbs, butter and cream. The result should pour thickly, not stand in a mound.
- YieldOne medium head, either way, serves four as a side dish. Two ounces of butter is half a stick.
Escaloped — more often spelled scalloped — meant any dish layered with sauce and crumbs and browned in the dish it was baked in, a technique that carried American cooks through the whole late nineteenth century with oysters, potatoes, tomatoes and, as here, cauliflower. The Dixie Cook-Book appeared in the 1880s as one of the large compiled household manuals of the era, assembled from contributed and borrowed receipts, and this entry shows the habit plainly: two separate methods run together in one paragraph. The frank note that the layered version "is a good way to use common heads" is a reminder that cauliflower was then a fussy garden crop, and a head that came up small, loose or discoloured was still worth eating if you buried it in cream sauce. The instruction to serve in the baking dish appears in both halves of the entry.