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Cabbage, Creamed
Thoroughly cleanse two young cabbages, and boil them until quite soft. Take them out, drain, and press them between two hot plates until they are dry, when they may be slightly chopped. Melt in a stewpan a piece of butter the size of an egg, add pepper and salt, then put in the cabbage, and turn it about for two or three minutes. When it is thoroughly heated, dredge a table-spoonful of flour over it, and mix with it very gradually a cupful of milk or cream. Serve on a hot dish. Time, half an hour. Probable cost, 1d. or 2d. each. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward Victorian vegetable dish that suffers only from its boiling time. The technique is sound: cook, dry thoroughly, then build a quick sauce around the cabbage rather than under it.
- Don't boil to "quite soft"Modern palates and modern cabbages want 5-8 minutes in well-salted water, until the thickest ribs are just yielding. The original allows half an hour for the whole dish, which suggests a longer boil and a preference for a softer result than most cooks want now.
- The pressing step is the hingeWet cabbage will thin the sauce into grey liquid. Press hard between plates or in a clean towel, or squeeze in a colander with the back of a ladle, until no more water runs.
- Butter the size of an eggAbout 2 oz, or 4 tablespoons. That is generous for two cabbages; 2-3 tablespoons makes a lighter dish.
- Two young cabbagesVictorian spring or summer cabbages were small, perhaps 1 lb each. One medium green or Savoy cabbage, about 2 lb trimmed, is the right quantity for four.
- Cook out the flourThe tablespoon of flour is dredged onto hot buttered cabbage rather than made into a roux, so give it a full minute of stirring before any liquid goes in, or the sauce tastes pasty.
- Adding the milkAdd the cup of milk or cream in stages, stirring, and let it come to a bare simmer to thicken. Cream is more forgiving; whole milk needs a couple of minutes' reduction to coat properly.
- SeasoningPepper and salt go in before the cabbage in the original. Taste again at the end -- cabbage that has been boiled in salted water and then drained absorbs unpredictably. A grating of nutmeg is period-appropriate.
- YieldServes three or four as a side dish, as stated. It does not reheat well; the sauce breaks and the cabbage weeps.
Cassell's ran to thousands of entries arranged alphabetically, and cabbage got a long run of them -- note the "probable cost, 1d. or 2d. each." Creaming was one Victorian rescue for a vegetable with a reputation for coarseness and smell: boil it, dry it, then enrich it with butter, flour and milk so it arrived at the table looking and tasting like something from a better dinner. The method is essentially a bechamel built in the pan around the vegetable rather than poured over it, a shortcut of the kind often found where the full French sauce repertoire was being simplified for households with one cook and one range. Cabbage's long association with overcooking in Britain owes a good deal to instructions like "boil until quite soft," which made sense when the vegetable arrived at the kitchen door tough, mature and often stored for weeks.