2. Boiled (American Agriculturist).—Boil in water, slightly salted—never with meat. When tender, which will usually be with twenty minutes cooking, take up and drain and cover with drawn butter (white sauce, made with butter, flour and water) and serve hot. They are usually eaten without other addition, but some dress with pepper and vinegar—the same as they do cabbage.
3. Boiled (Good Living).—Trim off the outside leaves, leaving one row around the flower. Cut an X in the stalk. Have a large pot of boiling water on the fire. Add enough milk to whiten the water; also one level teaspoonful of salt. The cauliflower should be left in vinegar and water for twenty to thirty minutes before boiling. This system is supposed to draw out any insects that may lurk within. Drain it thoroughly; tie it loosely in a piece of cheese-cloth large enough to cover it entirely. Put it into the boiling water, which must cover it well. Let it boil until quite tender, but be careful that it does not go to pieces. As cauliflowers vary very much in size, only a general idea of the time required can be given. One of ordinary size will take about forty minutes, perhaps more. When cooked lift it out by the cheese-cloth, drain very thoroughly, and set in a round dish. Make a cream sauce (No. 42), pour it over the cauliflower, cover, and let it stand for a few minutes for the sauce to penetrate. Then serve. Or, if a handsome specimen successfully boiled, serve it in a round dish with a white sauce (No. 41) served separately in a sauce-boat. Add a squeeze of lemon juice to the sauce before serving. Small cauliflowers will not require more than thirty minutes to boil.
4. Boiled (Buckeye Cook Book).—To each two quarts of water allow a heaping teaspoon of salt; choose close and white cauliflower; trim off decayed outside leaves, and cut stock off flat at bottom. Open flower a little in places to remove insects, which are generally found around the stalk, and let cauliflowers lie with head downward in salt and water for two hours previous to dressing them, which will effectually draw out all vermin. Then put in boiling water, adding salt in above proportion, and boil briskly for fifteen or twenty minutes over a good fire, keeping saucepan uncovered. Water should be well skimmed, and when cauliflowers are tender, take up, drain, and if large enough, place upright in a dish; serve with plain melted butter, a little of which may be poured over the flowers; or a white sauce may be used, made as follows: Put butter size of an egg into saucepan, and when it bubbles stir in a scant half teacup of flour; stir well with an egg-whisk until cooked; then add two teacups of thin cream, some pepper and salt. Stir it over the fire until perfectly smooth. Pour the sauce over the cauliflower and serve. Many let the cauliflower simmer in the same sauce a few moments before serving.
Cauliflower is delicious served as a garnish around spring chicken, or with fried sweet-breads, when the white sauce should be poured over both. In this case it should be made by adding the cream, flour and seasoning to the little grease (half a teaspoon) that is left after frying the chickens or sweet-breads.
5. Baked (Buckeye Cook Book).—Prepare as for boiling, and parboil five minutes; cut into pieces and put into a pie dish; add a little milk, season with salt, pepper and butter; cover with dry, grated cheese, and bake.
6. Steamed (Mrs. M. P. A. Crozier).—Lay the nicely prepared cauliflower head in the deep dish from which it is to be served at table, sprinkle salt over it, place it in the steamer, cover closely, and steam till tender. Remove to the table, and pour over it rich, sweet cream, slightly salted and heated.
7. Stewed (Gardener's Chronicle).—Cut up your cauliflower into sprigs of convenient size to serve with a tablespoon, and throw them into cold water an hour before cooking. To stew them, have a stout, iron stewpan, white-enamelled inside—an ordinary tin saucepan or boiler will hardly do. Put a large lump of butter into your stewpan as you set it over a gentle fire; instead of butter you may use the fat taken from the top of cold roast meat gravy—that of beef or veal is preferable to that of mutton. As the grease melts, stir into it an onion chopped very fine, and a little flour and water; continue stirring until the whole is nicely browned; then put in your sprigged cauliflower, adding only just enough water or broth to cook it; season lightly with pepper and salt, and a very light dust of grated nutmeg, if not disapproved; let it stew gently till perfectly tender; when done the gravy should be so reduced as to be no more in quantity than is wanted to serve as sauce with the vegetable; for this reason the salt must be used with great moderation, otherwise, by concentration, the gravy would be converted into brine; transfer the cauliflower from the stewpan to a hot dish, and pour the reduced gravy over it.
Note that by this method nothing is lost. The natural and nutritive juices of the vegetable, the sugar and albumen, are retained instead of being drawn out and diluted by boiling in several pints of water, and consequently wasted and thrown away. Note also that this receipt is founded (like the directions for many other good dishes) on the roux—flour browned in butter—which is one of the grand elements in French cookery.
8. Stewed (Mr. S. J. Soyer[E]).—Cauliflower butter, salt, sugar, two and one-third ounces of flour, half a pint of cream, one-eighth of the soup from the cauliflower.
The cauliflower is cut into pieces, boiled slightly in salted water, taken out of the soup and put on a colander to drain. The butter and flour are baked together and thinned with the cream, and about the quantity of the soup above stated. The cauliflower is put into this sauce and again brought to a boil, whereupon it is served warm.