No. 2718

Cauliflowers with Fried Bread-Crumbs

Choux-fleurs a la Mie de Pain Frite

Divide some cauliflowers into separate flowerets all of uniform size; pare the stalks to a point, wash and drop them into a saucepanful of hot water, then boil the liquid very slowly. When the pieces are three-quarters cooked salt the water and withdraw the saucepan to allow them to finish cooking much slower; in this way they remain firmer; drain, dress the cauliflowers and cover over with butter having fried bread-crumbs added to it.

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For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives no quantities and no timings, which is normal for The Epicurean — it was written for cooks who already knew the dish. The technique here is the whole point: gentle heat and late salting to keep the florets from collapsing.

The hinge: salt at the endThe instruction to salt only when the cauliflower is three-quarters done is deliberate, and it is the one thing to follow. Ranhofer's own reason is given in the text: withdrawing the pan so the florets finish more slowly means 'they remain firmer'. As a rough guide, expect something like 6-10 minutes total for medium florets rather than a fixed time.
"Boil the liquid very slowly"A rolling boil knocks the curd apart and leaves the outer surface mushy before the stalk is done. Keep it at a lazy simmer throughout, and test with a knife tip at the thickest part of the stem, not the curd.
Paring the stalksTrimming each stem to a point is not decoration alone — it thins the densest part so the stalk and the curd finish together. Cut florets to a uniform size for the same reason.
The bread-crumbsThese are dry white crumbs from a stale crumb of bread, fried in butter until hazelnut brown, not packaged dried crumbs and not panko. Brown them slowly in the butter over moderate heat; they scorch in seconds once they take colour.
Butter quantityRanhofer gives none. As a modern starting point, for a 2 lb head roughly 4 tablespoons of butter to about half a cup of fresh crumbs gives enough to coat without pooling. The recipe has the cauliflower dressed and then covered with the butter and crumbs; serve at once, while both are still hot.
YieldOne large head will serve about four as a vegetable course, and the dish is best eaten straight away, as the crumbs soften once they sit in the butter.
WashingRanhofer says only to wash the florets before dropping them into hot water. A 10-minute soak in cold salted water first is worth adding if the head is farm-fresh, to flush out any insects from between the curds.

A Little History

This is Charles Ranhofer's choux-fleurs à la mie de pain frite, from The Epicurean (1894), the enormous compendium he assembled after some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York. The formula is close to the French classic known as à la polonaise — vegetable, usually cauliflower or asparagus, finished with browned butter and fried crumbs, though the polonaise conventionally includes sieved hard-boiled egg, which this preparation lacks; the "Polish" attribution is traditional rather than documented, and Ranhofer uses a plainly descriptive title. Its neighbours in the book (cauliflower with cheese, cauliflower with white sauce) show how a nineteenth-century restaurant catalogued vegetables: one preparation per sauce, listed in series, so a cook could be sent to a numbered entry rather than told what to do.