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Cold Slaw
Take a solid young white cabbage and shred fine. Make the following dressing. Heat 1/4 pint vinegar and put into it 1 tablespoonful each of sugar, butter, 1 saltspoonful celery salt, 1 of pepper, and 1 of salt. Take from the fire and stir in 1 cupful of scalded milk, to which have been added 2 well-beaten eggs. Mix in with the shredded cabbage in a salad bowl. Set on ice, and serve very cold.
Cold slaw is frequently dressed with plain vinegar dressing, and salt, pepper, and paprika.
A boiled-style dressing on raw shredded cabbage, from the era before bottled mayonnaise. The measurements are straightforward once the old spoon names are translated.
- The dressing needs to be cookedAs written, the beaten eggs go into scalded milk off the heat and the mixture is then chilled, which may leave them well short of a safe temperature. Combine the hot vinegar, milk and eggs in the pan and stir over low heat until the custard thickens and registers 160F, or use pasteurized eggs.
- A saltspoonfulA quarter teaspoon. So 1/4 teaspoon each of celery salt, pepper and salt -- restrained seasoning for a whole cabbage, and worth tasting and adjusting at the end.
- A quarter pint of vinegarHalf a cup, 4 fluid ounces. Cider vinegar suits this best; distilled white will read harsh against only a tablespoon of sugar.
- Scalded milkMilk heated to just below the boil, until it steams and bubbles ring the edge of the pan, around 180F. The step was originally about killing enzymes and souring organisms in unpasteurized milk; today it simply gives you a hot liquid to temper the eggs with.
- Temper, do not dumpBeat the eggs, then pour the hot milk into them in a thin stream while whisking, and only then return everything to the pan. Adding eggs to a pan of near-boiling milk in one go gives you sweet scrambled egg.
- Cool the dressing before it meets the cabbageWarm dressing wilts shredded cabbage and draws out water, so the bowl turns soupy on ice. Chill the dressing fully, then toss.
- ShreddingA mandoline or the slicing disc of a food processor gives the fine, even shred the recipe wants. A cored cabbage half laid flat and sliced thin with a knife works as well.
- YieldOne medium head, about 2 lb, dressed as here serves six to eight as a side. It is best within a few hours; by the next day the cabbage has given up its water.
"Cole slaw" comes from the Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad, which came to America with Dutch settlers around New York; "cold slaw" is a later English reanalysis of that first syllable, and a matching "hot slaw" followed by analogy. The cooked dressing here is an older American style: before commercial mayonnaise was widely sold, a household salad dressing often meant vinegar, eggs, milk or cream and a little butter, thickened over the fire -- the same formula that survives in boiled dressings for potato salad. The recipe also offers plain vinegar with salt, pepper and paprika instead, and the direction to "set on ice" suggests a kitchen with an icebox and delivered ice.