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Cabbage Salad (Two quarts finely-chopped)
Two quarts finely-chopped cabbage, two level table-spoons salt, two of white sugar, one of black pepper, and a heaping one of ground mustard; rub yolks of four hard-boiled eggs until smooth, add half cup butter, slightly warmed; mix thoroughly with the cabbage, and add tea-cup good vinegar; serve with whites of the eggs sliced and placed on the salad. -Mrs. Col. Hawkins.
A butter-and-egg-yolk dressing of the sort that preceded bottled mayonnaise, mixed raw into shredded cabbage. It works, but the seasoning as written is aggressive by current standards.
- The hinge: warm the butter, don't melt itThe half cup of butter should be soft enough to mash smoothly into the yolks but still opaque. Fully melted butter will separate out and then set into flecks the moment it meets cold cabbage.
- A tea-cupNineteenth-century American books commonly reckon a tea-cup at roughly three-quarters of a standard cup, as against the larger coffee-cup. Add the vinegar gradually and taste; six ounces is a great deal of acid for two quarts of cabbage.
- SaltTwo level tablespoons is about 36 g, well beyond modern seasoning for this volume. Start with two teaspoons, mix, and build from there.
- Pepper and mustardA tablespoon of black pepper and a heaping tablespoon of dry mustard give a genuinely hot dressing, which is the period intention. Halve both if you want the cabbage to taste of cabbage.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold cider vinegar of the 1870s was made at home or locally and varied in strength, unlike today's standardised 5 percent. Modern distilled white vinegar will read sharper; cider vinegar is the closer match in flavour.
- Chopping"Finely-chopped" points to chopping rather than shredding. A coarse chop holds the heavy dressing better than fine shreds, which go limp.
- Timing and yieldTwo quarts of chopped cabbage is about one medium head and serves eight to ten as a side. Dress within an hour of serving; the butter firms up under refrigeration and the salt draws water out overnight.
Buckeye Cookery and Practical Housekeeping came out of Ohio in the late 1870s, compiled from contributions by named local women, which is why this salad carries Mrs. Col. Hawkins's name rather than a title alone. Dressings built on hard-boiled yolks, butter, mustard and vinegar were common in American kitchens before jarred mayonnaise became widely available; they require no whisking skill. The dish itself belongs to the family of cold cabbage salads generally traced to the Dutch koolsla, which nineteenth-century American books render variously as cold slaw, cole slaw and simply cabbage salad. The heavy hand with pepper and mustard is typical of the period.