Hot Slaw
Shred one-half head of cabbage. Put into a stewkettle the following: 1 tablespoon salad oil 3 1/4 cups water 1/2 cup lemon juice Put in the cabbage and cook till tender.
A very plain hot cabbage dish: oil, water, lemon juice, and shredded cabbage cooked down. The proportions as printed give more liquid than the cabbage needs, so the cook has to make a judgement call.
- The water quantityHalf a head of shredded cabbage needs no more than about 3/4 cup of liquid to steam tender; three and a quarter cups will boil it into a watery mess. Start with enough to cover the bottom of the pan by half an inch and add more only if it threatens to scorch.
- StewkettleAny wide, heavy-bottomed saucepan or Dutch oven with a lid. Width matters more than depth here, since the cabbage should sit in a shallow layer rather than a deep pile.
- Salad oilIn American books of this general period 'salad oil' usually meant a mild oil, often cottonseed or a light olive. Any neutral oil works; a tablespoon of bacon fat or butter is another common treatment for a hot slaw.
- TimingShredded cabbage is tender in 8 to 12 minutes covered over medium heat. Cooked much past that it turns grey and sulphurous.
- The lemon juiceHalf a cup is assertive, and acid also slows cabbage from softening. Cook the cabbage until nearly tender first, then add the lemon juice for the last couple of minutes so it stays bright rather than stewed.
- SeasoningNo salt, pepper or sugar is listed, and the dish is flat without them. A good pinch of salt and a teaspoon of sugar bring the sour and sweet into balance, which is what hot slaw depends on.
- YieldHalf a head of cabbage serves four as a side dish. Serve it hot, straight from the pan, with the pan liquid spooned over.
Hot slaw is the cooked cousin of cole slaw, whose name goes back to Dutch koolsla (cabbage salad); the variant spelling "cold slaw" is usually explained as an English reshaping of that word, and the two spellings circulated alongside each other in American writing from the late eighteenth century onward. Where the cold version dresses raw cabbage, the hot version wilts it in a sharp dressing of fat and acid, a treatment associated with Pennsylvania German and Midwestern kitchens where cabbage was cheap and stored well through winter. Many nineteenth-century hot slaws used vinegar and some thickened the dressing with egg or cream; the lemon juice here, with no dairy and no egg, is a plainer treatment.