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Hot Slaw
Shave the cabbage fine; put it on in just water enough to cook it; when done put a little milk in, salt and pepper; then rub a little flour in some butter and stir in. An egg may be stirred in in the place of the flour.
A creamed cabbage in all but name, with no quantities given anywhere. The proportions below are the ones the method implies.
- ScaleOne medium head of cabbage, about 2 lb shredded, serves four to six as a side. Use roughly 1/2 cup milk, 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon flour for that amount.
- "Just water enough to cook it"Half an inch in the bottom of a wide pan, lid on. Cabbage releases a great deal of its own liquid, and the point is to have almost none left when it is tender so the milk is not diluted into greyness.
- TimingFinely shaved cabbage is done in 8 to 12 minutes. Longer boiling turns it slack and sulphurous; stop while there is still some bite.
- The flour and butterRubbing flour into softened butter makes a beurre manié. Add it in small pinches to simmering liquid and stir until it thickens, about a minute, or the flour will taste raw.
- The egg variantIf using egg instead of flour, take the pan off the heat, temper the beaten egg with a spoonful of the hot liquid first, then stir it in. Returned to a boil it will curdle. One egg is enough for a head of cabbage.
- SeasoningSalt, pepper, and a spoonful of cider vinegar at the end if you want it to read as slaw rather than as creamed cabbage. The book leaves the vinegar out, unlike many other hot slaw recipes of the period.
Slaw comes from the Dutch koolsla (kool, cabbage, plus sla, salad), which entered American English as "cole slaw"; "cold slaw" is a reinterpretation of that phrase, and "hot slaw" its opposite. Hot slaw was common cool-weather cooking where cabbage stored well through the winter, and in Pennsylvania German and Midwestern kitchens it often meant shredded cabbage wilted in a hot dressing sharp with vinegar, sugar and often bacon fat. The version here belongs to the milder, milk-and-butter branch of the family, closer to creamed cabbage than to a dressed salad. The alternative of thickening with an egg instead of flour survives in this book as a note rather than the main instruction.