Cabbage Salad
1 cabbage head 1/2 cup vinegar 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 tablespoon oil or melted butter 1/2 teaspoon salt Shred fine the cabbage and heap in a dish; combine the vinegar, butter and seasonings and pour over the cabbage. Mix well through the cabbage, using a silver fork. A boiled dressing may be used.
A plain vinegar slaw of the sort that appeared on American tables year-round before refrigerated greens were common. The proportions are sound; the only real work is in the shredding and the resting.
- Size of the cabbage"1 cabbage head" is unspecified; a firm green head of about 2 lb shreds down to roughly 8-10 cups, which would give six to eight side servings, and half a cup of vinegar is enough to dress that volume.
- Shred fine, and mean itThis is the hinge of the dish. Coarse cabbage stays dry and squeaky under so little dressing; shreds no thicker than a coin wilt slightly and take the vinegar. A mandoline or the slicing disc of a food processor does in a minute what the original cook did with a knife.
- The vinegarHousehold vinegar of the period was usually cider vinegar, of roughly comparable strength to what is sold today. Half a cup neat is sharp by modern taste; many cooks now cut it with a spoonful of sugar or a little water, though the recipe as written is authentic to its period.
- The silver forkNot affectation. Iron and carbon-steel utensils discolored acidic foods and gave them a metallic edge, which is why silver, wood or bone was often called for with vinegar. Stainless steel does the job without any such worry.
- Melted butterButter firms as the salad chills and leaves waxy flecks. Oil is the more reliable of the two options given, unless the salad is served immediately at room temperature.
- The boiled dressing alternativeThe book assumes the reader knows it: a cooked dressing of egg, vinegar, mustard and milk or cream, thickened over heat. It turns this same cabbage into a creamy slaw.
- RestingNo standing time is given. Twenty to thirty minutes in the refrigerator lets the salt draw moisture out and softens the cabbage; much beyond an hour or two and it slumps and weeps.
Vinegar-dressed shredded cabbage reaches American cookbooks by way of the Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad, the word anglicized to "cole slaw" and later misheard as "cold slaw." Cabbage earned its constant place in these books because it kept: a head stored in a cellar stayed edible for months when lettuce was a summer luxury, so a salad course was possible in February. The Gold Medal Flour book, published by the Washburn-Crosby milling company to sell flour, carried a full complement of such non-baking recipes. The instruction to use a silver fork is often taken as a sign of its date, from a moment when iron utensils would blacken anything acidic.