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Colander
proportion, and when cold, pour it over the cabbage. It will be fit for use in a week, but if kept for a very long time, the cabbage is liable to get soft and to discolor. To be really nice and crisp, and of a good red color, it should be eaten almost immediately after it is made. A little bruised cochineal boiled with the vinegar, adds much to the appearance of this pickle. Tie a bladder over the top of the vessel in which it is kept, and keep in a dry place.
This is the tail end of a pickled red cabbage recipe — the page break has carried the running header "COLANDER" onto the top of it, and the opening lines (salting and draining the shredded cabbage, and spicing the vinegar) belong to the previous page. What survives is the finishing and keeping, which is where the method actually turns.
- What is missingRecipes of this type normally begin by shredding a firm red cabbage, layering it with salt in a dish for a day or so, draining it thoroughly, then boiling vinegar with spices such as peppercorns, allspice and a little mace or ginger. The surviving word "proportion" appears to refer to that spiced vinegar; the exact wording of the lost lines cannot be recovered.
- The hinge: cold vinegarThe spiced vinegar must be completely cold before it goes over the cabbage. Warm vinegar wilts the leaf and the pickle turns limp and dull, which is presumably why the recipe specifies it.
- Vinegar strengthUse a vinegar of at least 5 percent acidity — ordinary distilled malt or cider vinegar. Period vinegar varied widely in strength, and weak vinegar is one thing that can leave a pickle soft and cloudy.
- CochinealCochineal is a red dye made from dried scale insects; it is still sold as carmine or E120 and is edible. It is cosmetic here and can be left out — good red cabbage in acid goes bright magenta on its own.
- The bladderA pig's bladder tied wet over the jar mouth shrank as it dried into an airtight seal, and vinegar attacks metal lids. Use a glass jar with a plastic or plastic-lined lid, or a layer of baking parchment under the lid.
- KeepingTreat this as a refrigerator pickle rather than a shelf-stable preserve: it is unprocessed and raw-packed. The book says it is fit for use in a week, that long keeping makes the cabbage soft and discoloured, and that for crispness and colour it should be eaten almost immediately after it is made — sound advice.
- YieldThe recipe specifies no quantities. A medium red cabbage, salted and drained, will fill roughly one quart jar, with spiced vinegar to cover.
Pickled red cabbage was one of the plainest and most reliable of English store-cupboard pickles, and it crossed into American household books with its method essentially unchanged: salt to draw out water, cold spiced vinegar to preserve, and a short life on the shelf. It was a sharp, cheap relish meant to cut through boiled and roast meat in a period when a winter table had little else fresh about it. The cochineal note is a reminder that colour was openly manipulated in the Victorian and Edwardian kitchen; carmine was a respectable ingredient at a time when the more alarming red colourings in commercial pickles, along with the copper salts used to green them, were a running subject of food-adulteration scandal. The bladder tied over the jar is older still, the standard household seal before screw-top glass became cheap, and its survival here shows how long such instructions were copied forward from earlier compilations.