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Cauliflower Au Gratin
Trim off the green leaves, cut away the stalk and clean a large head fine white cauliflower; place in a large saucepan with plenty water to cover it, with quarter pint milk and tablespoon salt; boil for forty minutes, drain and separate the branches from the main stalk. Heat a tablespoon butter in a frying pan, add the cauliflower, season with half teaspoon each salt and pepper, then gently fry for ten minutes, frequently turning the pieces meanwhile, being careful not to break them, and arrange on a baking dish. Mix in a saucepan one tablespoon butter with one and a half tablespoons flour, heat for a half minute, add one and a half gills hot milk, two saltspoons salt, half a saltspoon each cayenne pepper and grated nutmeg, a tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese and mix until boiling, then pour over the cauliflower. Sprinkle a half tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese over, set in the oven for fifteen minutes, remove and serve.
A straightforward béchamel gratin, but the boiling time belongs to an era that liked its vegetables surrendered. Two measurements need translating and one needs cutting by three quarters.
- The forty-minute boilA whole head simmered forty minutes collapses into grey mush, and the recipe then asks you to fry it without breaking the pieces. Boil the head 10-12 minutes, or break it into florets first and give them 5-6, until a knife meets slight resistance. It gets ten more minutes in the pan and fifteen in the oven after that.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills is 3/4 cup of hot milk. A saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon: two saltspoons of salt is 1/2 teaspoon, and half a saltspoon of cayenne is 1/8 teaspoon, which is assertive but not wrong.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given. Everything is already cooked and the sauce is already boiling, so this is a browning stage — 400F for the fifteen minutes, or a few minutes under the broiler if the top is still pale.
- The milk in the cooking waterThe quarter pint of milk (half a cup) in the boiling water is a traditional trick said to keep cauliflower white. A tablespoon of lemon juice is often used to the same end, with less risk of a boil-over.
- Salt levelsA tablespoon of salt in the cooking water is correct for a large pot. The additional half teaspoon each of salt and pepper at the frying stage, plus the salt in the sauce, adds up quickly — season the fried florets lightly and adjust at the end.
- The sauceOne tablespoon butter to one and a half tablespoons flour to 3/4 cup milk gives a thick coating sauce. Add the hot milk gradually off the heat to avoid lumps, and stir in the Parmesan after the sauce has boiled so it does not turn stringy.
- CheeseA tablespoon in the sauce and half a tablespoon on top is restrained by current taste. Doubling both is closer to how the dish is served now, and a little Gruyère in the sauce browns better than Parmesan alone.
- YieldOne large head serves four as a side dish, or two as a supper with bread.
Cauliflower au gratin sits at the point where French technique met Italian cheese in the international hotel kitchen. Au gratin refers to the crust, not the cheese: the term comes from the French for the scrapings or crust formed on a dish, and a gratin can be made with breadcrumbs and no cheese at all. The pairing of cauliflower with béchamel and Parmesan was well established in French cookery by the nineteenth century. Nutmeg is conventional in a béchamel; the cayenne is the period's habitual insurance against blandness.