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Puree of Cauliflower
Remove the outer leaves and thoroughly wash a large head white cauliflower without cutting off the stalk. Place in a saucepan with three quarts water, quarter pint milk and teaspoon salt and let boil for fifty minutes. Lift up and thoroughly drain, then press through a sieve into a small saucepan, add one ounce good butter, two saltspoons salt, one saltspoon cayenne pepper and a saltspoon grated nutmeg; mix while heating for five minutes, remove and use as required.
A purée in the older sense: a thick vegetable paste meant to be used as a component, not a bowl of soup. The instructions are sound apart from the boiling time.
- Cut the boil shortFifty minutes in salted water reduces cauliflower to grey mush and drives off most of its flavour. A large head, left whole, is tender at 15 to 20 minutes; test the stalk with a knife tip and lift it out then.
- Why the milkThe quarter pint (1/2 cup) of milk in the cooking water helps keep the curd white rather than sulphur-yellow. The cooking liquid is discarded here, so it contributes nothing to the finished purée.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. So: 1/2 teaspoon salt in the purée, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne and 1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg. The cayenne is assertive at that level; start with half if the purée is going under something delicate.
- Sieve or processorPressing hot cauliflower through a sieve gives a finer, drier result than a food processor, which tends to whip in water and loosen the texture. A food mill or ricer is the fair modern compromise.
- Drain hardThe single thing that decides whether this works. Cauliflower holds a great deal of water; drain it in a colander several minutes, then press gently before sieving, or the purée will slacken as it sits.
- The five minutes of heatingThis is to dry the purée and cook off rawness in the seasoning, not to warm it through. Keep it moving over moderate heat in a wide pan so steam escapes.
- Yield and useA large head gives something in the region of 2 to 3 cups of thick purée, enough for four as a vegetable. Loosened with cream or stock it becomes the base of a cream of cauliflower soup; used stiff, it can fill tartlets, line a dish under fish, or bed roast lamb.
This comes from Alexander Filippini's The International Cook Book (1906); Filippini spent decades at Delmonico's in New York, and his instinct to record a plain vegetable purée as a standing preparation rather than a finished dish reflects the French-style professional kitchen he worked in. In that system a purée was stock-in-trade: a seasoned vegetable paste held ready to be thinned into soup, piped as a garnish, or spread as a bed, which is what "use as required" points to at the end of the recipe. Cauliflower had particular standing in that repertoire, its name in French cookery — Du Barry, for dishes garnished with it — customarily traced to Madame du Barry, mistress of Louis XV, though the attribution is traditional rather than documented. The milk in the cooking water and the nutmeg are both old habits attached to the vegetable: one to keep the curd pale, the other reputedly to soften the sulphurous edge of the cabbage family.