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Cabbage
Much care should be used in preparing cabbage for boiling, as insects are frequently found within its leaves. The drum -head cabbage requires a good hour to boil; the green Savoy cabbage will boil in half the time.
Cabbage should not boil too long, as too much boiling makes them watery and insipid. Drain the cabbage through a colander, and serve with drawn butter, or butter poured over it.
Red cabbage is used for slaw, also the white winter cabbage.
A set of working notes rather than a formal recipe, and the timings are the part that has not aged well. The text as printed carries a few compositor's duplications ("will boil in half the time", "and serve with drawn"), which are typesetting slips, not repeated steps.
- Cut the times hardAn hour of boiling reduces a drumhead cabbage to grey pulp and brings out the sulphurous smell associated with overcooked brassicas. Quartered wedges need 8-12 minutes in well-salted water; shredded cabbage needs 4-6. The book's own warning about watery, insipid cabbage is the point worth keeping.
- Drumhead and SavoyDrumhead is the dense, flat-topped white cabbage still sold as such in seed catalogues; a standard green or white head is the equivalent. Savoy is the crinkle-leaved sort, looser and thinner-leaved, which is why it cooks faster.
- Insects in the leavesField-grown cabbage of this period arrived with cabbage worms and aphids between the leaves. Quarter the head and soak the pieces 10 minutes in cold salted water, then rinse. Modern supermarket cabbage rarely needs it; a head from a farm stand or garden does.
- Drawn butterIn many American books of this period drawn butter means a thin white sauce: butter and flour cooked together, thinned with water or the cooking liquid, seasoned. The term is sometimes used for plain melted butter too, and here the recipe offers butter poured over as a separate alternative.
- Drain properlyCabbage holds a surprising amount of water. Press the wedges gently in the colander before saucing, or the drawn butter will slide off into a puddle.
- Salt the waterThe original says nothing about salt. Salted water seasons the leaves as they cook; use water salted like pasta water.
- Slaw varietiesThe book names red cabbage and white winter cabbage for slaw without saying why; both are dense heads that shred finely and hold dressing, while looser-leaved Savoy wilts more readily.
- YieldA medium head of about 2 lb serves four to six as a side.
Boiled cabbage with butter or a butter sauce was among the common American vegetable dishes of the nineteenth century, cheap, storable through winter in a root cellar, and widely grown in kitchen gardens. The distinction the book draws between drumhead and Savoy reflects a period when seed catalogues were a household reference. The insistence on checking for insects is a reminder that vegetables came from a field or a market wagon rather than a washed and bagged supply chain. The long boiling times printed here were standard advice well into the twentieth century; the shift toward brief cooking of green vegetables is generally traced to mid-century writers who argued, correctly, that overcooked brassicas lose both texture and their characteristic sweetness.