"To have any of the Brassicæ in proper flavor we must go to the German housewives and learn of them to cook cabbage, cauliflower, etc., in earthenware instead of metal. The German potters make stout boilers, like huge bean-pots, that hold six or eight cabbages, for restaurant cooking, and they are quite a different vegetable treated in this way. Try the experiment; put a cabbage in a stone jar with plenty of water, cover tight and boil till tender. I think it does not take as long to cook in this way as in ordinary kettles, the steady mild heat softening the tissues more steadily than the open boiling. And there is little or no smell to cabbage or onions cooked in a close stone pot in the oven. A cabbage baked in its own steam in such a pot and served with hot vinegar and butter is a high-flavored dish."
A writer in the Rural New Yorker sums up the prime requirements in cooking cauliflower as follows:
"Four rules never to be deviated from may be laid down: first, that the cauliflower is to be soaked in salt and water for at least a half hour before cooking, in order to drive out any insects or worms that may be lurking among the flowerets; second, (if to be boiled) when ready for cooking the vegetable is to be plunged into salted, thoroughly boiling water; third, it is not to be cooked a moment after it becomes tender; fourth, to be served as soon as done. Neglect of any of these points is sure to result in failure, while a careful following of them will give a wholesome, delicate dish, and one that will be eaten with gusto and remembered with pleasure."
A very simple method of serving cauliflower is with milk and butter, after the manner of cabbage, but a more elaborate white sauce generally accompanies it. This is the familiar drawn butter sauce, to which may be added a little vinegar or lemon juice, to give piquancy of flavor. Sometimes this sauce is varied by adding milk or cream to the flour and butter, when it is called "cream sauce."
The receipts given below are chiefly from the following four recent works on cookery:
"Good Living," by Sara Van Buren Brugière; G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York and London, 1890.
"The Buckeye Cook-Book"; Buckeye Publishing Company, Minneapolis, 1887.
"Our Home Cyclopedia," by Edgar S. Darling; Mercantile Publishing Company, Detroit, 1889.
"Mrs. A. B. Marshall's Cookery Book"; Marshall's School of Cookery, London, 1888.
1. Boiled (Gardener's Text Book).—The head should be cut with most of the surrounding leaves attached, which are to be trimmed off when the time comes for cooking. Let it lie half an hour in salt and water, and then boil it in fresh water for fifteen or twenty minutes, until a fork will easily enter the stem. Milk and water are better than water alone