Shred a cabbage very thin; sprinkle with salt and cook in as little water as possible until tender. Then add some milk and let boil. Add a tablespoonful of butter mixed with flour, some mace and white pepper to taste. Let boil up and serve hot.
November 7 — No. 7
Swedish
A plain creamed cabbage, thickened at the end with kneaded butter and flour. The recipe assumes a cook who knows the proportions, so the amounts need filling in.
- QuantitiesOne medium head of cabbage, about 2 lb, shredded fine, serves four as a side. Figure roughly 1 cup of milk, and a tablespoon each of butter and flour for the thickening.
- "As little water as possible"This is the hinge. A quarter-cup in a covered pan is enough; the salted cabbage releases its own liquid and effectively steams. Drowning it gives you grey, watery cabbage and you will lose the sweetness the dish depends on.
- Cooking timeThe recipe gives none. Long boiling was common in period cookbooks, but finely shredded cabbage is tender in 8 to 10 minutes covered, and still has some bite; take it further only if you want it fully soft.
- Butter mixed with flourThis is beurre manié flour worked to a paste, not a cooked roux. Drop it in in small pieces and stir until it dissolves, then let it boil a minute so the flour loses its raw taste.
- MaceMace is the lacy covering of the nutmeg seed, warmer and lighter than nutmeg itself. Ground mace is still sold; a scant quarter-teaspoon is plenty. Nutmeg can stand in, in roughly the same quantity, to taste.
- White pepperChosen largely so the sauce stays clean-looking. Black pepper will do, though it is not identical in flavour as well as showing in the sauce.
- MilkWhole milk gives the richest result; skim will work but the sauce will be thinner. If you want it richer, replace a few tablespoons with cream at the end and do not let it catch on the bottom.
Creamed cabbage of this kind is a fixture of Swedish home cooking, where cabbage was one of the reliable winter keepers alongside root vegetables, and where a milk-and-butter sauce thickened with flour turns up on many boiled vegetables. Mace and white pepper rather than caraway or dill suggest a genteel version of the dish, filtered through the Anglo-American cookbook tradition. "A dish from a different nation for every day of the year" collections of this sort were popular in the early twentieth century; the nationalities are often thin, but this one is fair enough, since cabbage in white sauce is genuinely Nordic.