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Plain Cold Slaw
Slice cabbage very fine, season with salt, pepper, and a little sugar; pour over vinegar and mix thoroughly. It is nice served in the center of a platter with fried oysters around it.
A dressing-free slaw that depends entirely on how finely the cabbage is cut and how long it sits. Two ingredient decisions the original leaves open will determine whether it tastes like 1877 or like something you want to eat.
- The hinge: cut and rest"Very fine" means shreds no thicker than a coin edge — a mandoline or the thin slicing side of a box grater, or a long sharp knife on a halved, cored head. Salt and vinegar draw water out, so dress it 20-30 minutes before serving; longer than an hour and it slumps into pickled cabbage.
- VinegarCider vinegar was the usual household vinegar in much of nineteenth-century America, though its strength varied and is not comparable to a standardised modern figure. Cider vinegar probably gets you closest; start with about 1/4 cup for a small head and add more only after tossing.
- "Plain" means no cream"Plain" means undressed -- The word most likely distinguishes this from slaws given a cream or cooked dressing. There is no oil in it either — this is a straight sour-sweet cabbage, not a vinaigrette slaw, and adding oil changes the dish.
- Sugar"A little" is undefined; a teaspoon per pound of cabbage is a reasonable starting point, and it is there to take the edge off the vinegar, not to sweeten. Taste after the cabbage has wept a little, since the released water dilutes everything.
- QuantityA medium head, about 2 lb trimmed, gives 6 to 8 side servings. Cabbage shrinks noticeably once salted, so a bowl that looks absurdly full at the start will be about two-thirds full by the table.
- The oyster platterIf you follow the serving suggestion, drain the slaw well before mounding it — standing vinegar will sog the fried coating within a minute or two. Assemble at the last possible moment.
"Cold slaw" is a folk-etymological reshaping of the Dutch koolsla (from koolsalade, cabbage salad); the "cold" form is attested in English well before the nineteenth century, and "cole slaw" is the form that survived. "Hot slaw" is often explained as a back-formation from "cold," and both cold and hot slaws appear in books of this era. Buckeye Cookery (1877), compiled from Ohio housekeepers' contributions, treats cabbage as a winter staple — a keeping vegetable that came out of the cellar when nothing green was available, with vinegar and sugar making it palatable raw. The pairing with fried oysters reflects how far barreled and canned oysters had traveled inland by the 1870s on the railroads; oyster suppers were widely popular, and something sharp and crisp was a common foil for a platter of fried ones.