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Cold Slaw
Chop with one small head of cabbage two hard-boiled eggs. Take one-half cup of sour cream, one tablespoon of sugar, a little salt and pepper, and a teaspoon of celery seed; beat all together, then add one teacup of vinegar, and pour over the cabbage. If this is put in a tight vessel, it will keep several days. Mrs Creigh, Omaha.
A sharp, eggy cabbage salad of the plainest sort. The one thing to watch is the vinegar: a full teacup of it will overwhelm a small cabbage unless you add it gradually and taste as you go.
- Teacup and cupA teacup in this period is not the modern 8 oz measuring cup; period tables give it variously, commonly somewhere between about 4 and 6 fl oz. Even at the lower end, that is a great deal of vinegar for one small head of cabbage, and household vinegar of the time was not standardized to the 5 percent strength sold now.
- Add the dressing in stagesBeat the cream, sugar, seasoning and celery seed together as written, then work the vinegar in a little at a time, stopping when the dressing tastes brightly sour rather than raw. You can always add more; you cannot take it back out.
- Sour cream then and nowThe original means cream that has soured naturally and is thin enough to pour. Modern cultured sour cream is much thicker, so thin it with a spoonful or two of milk or buttermilk before beating in the vinegar, or the dressing will not coat the cabbage.
- ChoppingThe recipe says only "chop," which suggests knife-chopped cabbage rather than fine shreds; chopping it fairly small helps it hold the dressing. Chop the eggs with the cabbage as directed so they distribute through it instead of sitting on top.
- Celery seedA whole teaspoon is assertive but plausible for this dressing; celery seed is potent, so if yours is fresh, start with half and adjust.
- Keeping itThe vinegar and salt do preserve it for a few days, but the chopped egg does not keep as well as the cabbage. Refrigerate in a covered container and eat within two or three days; the cabbage will soften and give up water, so drain and stir before serving.
- YieldA small head of cabbage gives about 6 side servings.
Dutch koolsla, meaning cabbage salad, gave English "cole slaw"; "cold slaw" is a later folk alteration of that, and the dish reached American tables through Dutch settlement, written variously as coleslaw, cold slaw and even "hot slaw" when the same dressing was poured over cabbage warm. Vinegar-and-cream dressings like this one predate commercial mayonnaise and were the standard treatment for raw cabbage in American household cookery through the nineteenth century; the creamy mayonnaise slaw most people picture today largely belongs to the twentieth. The attribution to Mrs Creigh of Omaha is typical of subscriber-contributed community compilations, which gathered contributions by name from readers across the country and so preserved a good deal of regional home practice that never appeared in the professional cookbooks.