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Cream Dressing for Cold Slaw
Two table-spoons whipped sweet cream, two of sugar, and four of vinegar; beat well and pour over cabbage, previously cut very fine and seasoned with salt. - Miss Laura Sharp, Kingston.
A three-ingredient boiled-free dressing of the plainest kind, and the quantities are small enough that you will want to scale them. A note on proportions and on what "sweet cream" meant is most of what a modern cook needs.
- "Sweet cream" means unsouredPeriod recipes specified sweet cream when they wanted fresh rather than soured or cultured cream, which was otherwise easy to end up with. Use ordinary heavy cream; nothing cultured is intended.
- Whip first, measure afterThe two tablespoons are most likely of cream already whipped rather than of liquid cream, though the recipe does not spell this out. Whip a little heavy cream to soft peaks and spoon out what you need.
- Vinegar strengthHousehold vinegar of the period varied a good deal in acidity, and the recipe does not say which kind. Four tablespoons of modern 5 percent vinegar against two of sugar makes a very sharp dressing; taste and cut the vinegar back or add sugar to suit.
- The mixture will breakBeating acid into whipped cream thins and curdles it slightly. That is expected here, and the dressing is meant to be poured over the cabbage at once rather than held.
- Salt and drain the cabbageSalt the cabbage -- the recipe seasons the cabbage with salt before dressing it. Salting will also draw out water, so you may prefer to let the shredded cabbage stand salted a while and squeeze it dry, though the recipe does not ask for draining.
- Dress lateCream dressings on cabbage weep quickly. Combine within half an hour of serving; this does not keep like a mayonnaise slaw.
"Cold slaw" is generally traced to an English mishearing of the Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad, heard as "cold" — and "hot slaw" is often said to have followed by analogy. Buckeye Cookery gives several slaw dressings side by side, some boiled with egg and butter, some raw like this one, and the difference is largely about how much trouble a cook wanted to take with a dish that had to be made fresh anyway. The credit line to Miss Laura Sharp of Kingston is typical of the book, which was assembled from contributors whose names were printed beside their receipts, with town names from more than one state.