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Cordons Gratin, Swiss
Open a pint can cordons, remove all the water and plunge them in boiling water for two minutes. Drain, season all around with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper, and arrange in a lightly buttered baking dish. Dredge over three tablespoons grated Swiss cheese, place a few bits of butter over them, pour a half gill cream around the dish and set in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove and serve.
A three-line gratin that depends entirely on knowing what "cordons" are: cardoons, the thistle relative grown for its celery-like stalks. The recipe assumes a can of them sitting in the pantry, which is where most of the work has already been done.
- Cordons means cardoonsThe spelling follows the French cardons. They are the blanched leaf stalks of a cultivated thistle, related to the globe artichoke and tasting of it. Canned or jarred cardoons still turn up in Italian and Swiss groceries; fresh ones appear in late autumn and winter.
- If you start from fresh stalksFresh cardoons need the strings pulled off and the stalks dropped straight into acidulated water, or they blacken within minutes. They then want 30 to 45 minutes of simmering, sometimes longer, before they are tender enough for the gratin. The two-minute plunge in the original applies to the canned product, and presumably serves to rinse off the canning liquid.
- Half a gillA gill is half a cup, so half a gill is a quarter cup, 2 fluid ounces of cream. Poured around rather than over, it should just film the bottom of the dish.
- Oven temperatureNone is given. Twenty minutes with cream and cheese wants a moderate oven, 375F, hot enough to brown the top and reduce the cream without splitting it.
- Ease off the saltA teaspoon of salt and half a teaspoon of pepper is aimed at a pint of unseasoned canned vegetable, and canned cardoons are often packed in salted liquid. Season lightly, taste, and let the cheese carry the rest.
- Swiss cheeseAt the time this meant Gruyere or Emmental, not the mild processed slices the name now suggests. Three tablespoons grated is a thin veil; a generous handful gives the crust the dish is named for.
- YieldA pint can serves two as a side dish, three at a stretch. Double everything for a family-sized gratin and give it closer to 30 minutes.
Cardoons gratin is strongly associated with Geneva: the spiny silver cardoon of Plainpalais, grown in the market gardens on the city's edge and blanched under earth or paper, is a traditional part of the Genevan Christmas table, often served alongside roast capon or beef marrow. The vegetable seems to have been more common in American markets and cans a century ago than it is now, having followed the same slow retreat as salsify and scorzonera; the fact that the recipe opens by reaching for a pint can, rather than explaining how to trim a thistle stalk, suggests how ordinary it once was.