Choose a fine, white head for this purpose. Put it, flower downward, into ice-cold salted water for half an hour. Tie, then, in coarse cheese-cloth or netting, and plunge, head foremost, into a pot of boiling salted water. Cook half an hour, drain, take off the cloth and dish. Pour a rich white sauce over it.
Cauliflower au gratin
Cut a large cauliflower into eight pieces and boil tender in salted water. Drain, lay in a deep pudding-dish, stems down, and pour over it a plain white sauce into which two hard-boiled eggs have been chopped. Sprinkle with bread-crumbs and bake to a light brown.
Cauliflower with tomato sauce
Boil a whole cauliflower for ten minutes in fresh water; drain and boil until tender in salted water. Put into a vegetable dish, flower side up, rub thoroughly with butter, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Last of all, pour over the cauliflower a pint of tomato sauce.
CELERY
Stewed celery (No. 1)
Wash the celery, cut into half-inch bits, and stew tender in slightly-salted boiling water. Drain this off and add a cupful of milk. Cook for three minutes, stir in a teaspoonful of butter rubbed into a teaspoonful of flour, boil up once, season to taste, and serve.
Stewed celery (No. 2)
A bunch of indifferent celery may be utilized for this dish. I have rescued stalks frosted accidentally through the cook’s carelessness, laid them in ice-cold water for two hours, prepared them as I shall direct, and presented as palatable food that whose end would otherwise have been the garbage pail.