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Cauliflower Snow
2 tablespoonfuls melted Crisco 4 poached eggs 2 cauliflowers Salt and paprika to taste Toasted bread Boil cauliflowers in salted water till tender, then drain and set near fire till quite dry. Remove all green parts and press flower through a potato ricer upon a hot dish, on which they are to be served. In no way crush the mass as it falls from the ricer. Sprinkle over with melted Crisco. Surround dish with poached eggs, each laid upon square of toasted butered bread. Dust each egg with salt and a little paprika. Serve very hot. Craigie Toast. 3 tablespoonfuls Crisco 4 eggs 4 tomatoes Salt and pepper to taste ½ cupful milk
A riced-cauliflower dish that lives or dies on texture: the point is a loose, snowy heap, not a puree. Everything else is assembly.
- Do not pack the riced cauliflowerThe instruction "in no way crush the mass as it falls from the ricer" is the whole recipe. Let the strands drop onto the serving dish and leave them where they land; a spoon or spatula turns snow into mash.
- Dry the cauliflower first"Set near fire till quite dry" means driving off the boiling water so the riced florets stay separate. A few minutes in a low oven, around 250F, or in the drained pan over the lowest burner does the same thing.
- CriscoThe book is a Procter & Gamble promotional cookbook, so the shortening is compulsory. Melted butter is better here, and browned butter better still; a neutral oil works if you want the fat to stay in the background.
- Two cauliflowersThe recipe calls for two heads to feed the four eggs' worth of diners. One large modern head, about 2 lb trimmed, will fill a platter for four; two will give generous seconds.
- Poached eggs and toastPoach the eggs last and keep them soft — the runny yolk is the sauce for the cauliflower. Toast the bread and butter it while hot so the squares do not go leathery under the eggs.
- PaprikaThe paprika generally sold in America at this date was the mild sweet type, often used as much for colour as for heat. Sweet Hungarian paprika gives the intended effect; smoked paprika will take the dish somewhere else entirely.
- YieldFour servings, set by the four eggs. Serve immediately on a heated dish — riced cauliflower goes cold faster than almost anything.
- The stray ingredients at the endThe Crisco, eggs, tomatoes, salt, pepper and milk after "Craigie Toast" belong to the next recipe in the book, whose method was cut off. Ignore them.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written to teach American cooks what to do with hydrogenated cottonseed oil, a product that had no culinary tradition behind it, and its recipes are largely conventional dishes with the lard or butter swapped out. This one belongs to the vein of late-Victorian and Edwardian "snow" dishes -- potato snow, cauliflower snow -- in which a cooked food is pressed through a ricer or sieve and served in a deliberately unpacked heap, a presentation that shows off the whiteness of the vegetable. Crisco was promoted as an all-vegetable fat, which Procter & Gamble marketed to observant Jewish households as well as to the vegetarian movement then gaining ground in Britain and the United States.