Parboil a cabbage in salted water; drain and stuff with chopped cooked mutton. Mix with chopped ham, 1 onion and 2 sprigs of parsley chopped fine. Add ½ cup of cooked rice, salt and pepper to taste. Place in a buttered baking-dish; sprinkle with bits of butter; add the juice of a lemon, and let bake in a moderate oven until done. Baste often with butter and serve hot.
A whole parboiled cabbage stuffed with mutton, ham and rice, then baked in butter and lemon. The recipe is written in the compressed style of a daily calendar cookbook, so several practical details need filling in.
- Moderate ovenSet 350F. A stuffed whole cabbage of this size needs 45 minutes to an hour to heat through and for the outer leaves to soften fully.
- How to actually stuff itParboil the cored cabbage 8-10 minutes so the leaves bend without tearing, then hollow the centre and pack the filling in, or peel the leaves back one at a time and layer the mixture between them. Tie the whole head with kitchen string before baking or it will fall open.
- The filling is already cookedThe filling is largely pre-cooked -- the recipe calls for cooked mutton and cooked rice (ham is not specified either way, though most ham is sold ready to eat), so the bake is mainly about heating the interior and softening the cabbage. Season the mixture assertively before it goes in; a bland stuffing stays bland.
- MuttonRarely sold in the US. Cooked lamb shoulder or leg is the direct substitute, and the call for already-cooked meat suits leftovers from a roast. Roughly 2 cups of chopped meat fills an average head.
- Ham as seasoningThe ham reads as a seasoning rather than bulk; a quarter cup, finely chopped, is enough. Taste before adding further salt.
- Butter and bastingThe dish has no stock or sauce, so the butter and lemon juice are the only added moisture. Use a generous 3-4 tablespoons. The recipe asks you to baste often; if the top colours too fast, cover it for part of the bake.
- YieldOne medium head serves four as a main course. Cut it into wedges at the table so each portion holds together.
The book belongs to a genre popular either side of 1900: a dish for every day of the year, each tagged with a nation, and apparently offering housekeepers variety without a new set of ingredients. The "national" label was often loose, and this one may be read against the mahshi tradition of stuffed vegetables found across Egypt and the wider eastern Mediterranean, where cabbage leaves are rolled individually with rice, minced meat and lemon. What appears here has been translated into an Anglo-American idiom: mutton and ham from the cold larder, a stuffed whole head rather than rolled leaves, and butter instead of oil or samna.