No. 2715

Stuffed Cauliflower a la Bechamel—Baked

Choux-fleurs Farcis a la Bechamel au Gratin

Prepare, cook and drain the cauliflower the same as for fried bread-crumbs (No. 2718); scoop out the hearts and fill them with veal godiveau (No. 85),into which mix parsley and chives, both finely chopped. Place the cauliflower stalk downward on a buttered dish and cover over with allemande sauce (No. 407), into which mix half as much cooked herbs (No. 385). Strew the top with bread-crumbs and grated parmesan, pour butter over and push into a moderate oven for ten minutes; baste at frequent intervals and color the cauliflower; remove and decorate around with heart-shaped croutons fried in butter, then serve.

← No. 2714 Carrots with Cream Cabbages & Greens No. 2716 Cauliflower a la Villeroi, Fried and Sauted →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

A whole boiled cauliflower hollowed out, packed with veal forcemeat, sauced and gratinated. Ranhofer writes for a kitchen with a stocked garde-manger, so most of the work sits behind the cross-references rather than in the paragraph itself.

The hinge: cook the forcemeat throughTen minutes in a moderate oven browns the crumbs but will not bring a raw veal godiveau in the center of a cauliflower to a safe temperature. Bake until the stuffing reaches 160F at the thickest point, then finish the top under a broiler for color rather than relying on the bake to do both jobs.
Moderate ovenRoughly 350-375F. The basting is what gives the gratin its gloss, and the recipe says so explicitly: spoon the melted butter and pan juices back over the crumbs every few minutes.
Godiveau (No. 85)A fine veal forcemeat, classically lean veal pounded with beef suet or kidney fat and bound with egg and ice, roughly equal parts meat and fat by the old formula. A modern equivalent is ground veal worked in a food processor with cold butter or fatback, egg and a little cream, seasoned well; keep everything very cold or it breaks.
Allemande sauce (No. 407)A velouté made from veal or chicken stock, finished with an egg-yolk and cream liaison and lemon. It is off most modern menus, but it is essentially a thick blond velouté enriched with yolks. Do not let it boil after the yolks go in.
"Cooked herbs" (No. 385)Not fresh herbs. Ranhofer's fines herbes preparation is chopped mushrooms, shallot and parsley cooked down in butter with a little stock and reduced almost dry, closer to a duxelles. The recipe calls for half as much of it as sauce, so it is a substantial addition, though the sauce still dominates.
Preparing the cauliflowerThe cross-reference is to the boiled-whole head; cook it until just tender and drain it very thoroughly, stalk up, so no water is trapped in the florets. Wet cauliflower will thin the sauce and stop the crumbs browning. Trim the base flat so it stands, since the recipe sets it stalk downward.
Crumbs and cheeseDry, fine crumbs rather than panko, mixed with grated Parmesan and moistened with clarified butter if you have it; whole butter's water content makes the crust patchy.
CroutonsBread cut with a heart-shaped cutter and fried in butter, arranged around the base. Purely decorative, and easily cut from sandwich bread.
YieldOne large head will serve about four as a course on its own, or six alongside a roast. The recipe garnishes the whole head and sends it out intact, so it is easiest to carve in wedges through the stuffing at the table.

A Little History

This is from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the record of some thirty years' cooking at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows the house style plainly: a cheap vegetable is turned into a service dish by stuffing it with forcemeat, masking it with a mother sauce derivative, and finishing it au gratin. The recipe is barely self-contained — four numbered cross-references in five sentences — because the book was written for professionals working from a prepared larder, where godiveau, allemande and cooked fines herbes were already standing by. Cauliflower itself is often said to have been a somewhat genteel vegetable in America at the time, more common in market-garden districts near cities than on the general table, and the French treatments Ranhofer gives it (à la Béchamel, à la Villeroi, fried in crumbs) travel straight from the Parisian repertoire he trained in.