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Some Kitchen Kinks: Cabbage
SUCCULENT VEGETABLES Cabbage. Because of the relatively large amount of sulphur which cabbage contains it is apt to be indigestible and cause flatulence when it is improperly cooked. On the other hand, it can be cooked so that it will be delicate and digestible. It is one of our most useful vegetables, being available during the late fall, winter, and spring months, when other green vegetables are difficult to procure. The quickest and simplest methods of cooking cabbage are The essentials for the the best. proper cooking of this vegetable are plenty of boiling water, a hot fire to keep the water boiling all the time, and thorough ventilation, that the strong-smelling gases, liberated by the high temperature, may be carried off in the steam. Young cabbage will cook in twentyfive or thirty minutes; late in the winter it may require forty-five minutes. The vegetable when done should be crisp and tender, any green portion should retain the color, and the white portion should be white and not yellow or brown. Overcooked cabbage or cauliflower is more or less yellow, has a strong flavor, and is very inferior to the same dish properly cooked. In addition, overcooking is a cause of digestive disturbance. To Boil Cabbage. -Cut a small head of cabbage into four parts, cutting down through the stock. Soak for half an hour in a pan of cold water to which has been added a tablespoonful of salt; this is to draw out any insects that may be hidden in the leaves. Take from the water and cut into slices. Have a large stewpan half full of boiling water; put in the cabbage, pushing it under the water with a spoon. Add one tablespoonful of salt and cook from twenty-five to forty-five minutes, depending upon the age of the cabbage. Turn into a colander and drain for about two minutes. Put in a chopping bowl and mince. Season with butter, pepper, and more salt if it requires it. Allow a tablespoonful of butter to a generous pint of the cooked vegetable. Cabbage cooked in this manner will be of delicate flavor and may be generally eaten without distress. Have the kitchen windows open at the top while the cabbage is boiling, and there will be little if any odor of cabbage in the house.
Cabbage Cooked with Pork.-For a small head of cabbage use about half a pound of mixed salt pork.
Boil the pork gently for three or four hours. Prepare the cabbage as for plain boiled cabbage. Drain well and put on to boil with the pork.
Boil rapidly for twenty-five to fortyfive minutes. Serve the pork witk the cabbage. The vegetable may require a little more salt. Smoked bacon or ham may be substituted for the pork. Cabbage may be cooked in water in which corned beef was boiled.
Creamed Cabbage 1 pint boiled and minced cabbage. 1/2 pint hot milk. 1 tablespoonful butter. 1 teaspoonful flour. ½ teaspoonful salt. 1/2 teaspoonful pepper.
Put the cabbage, hot milk, salt, and pepper in a stewpan and on the fire.
Three related methods for cabbage, written when long boiling was the norm. The chemistry the author describes is sound; the timings are the part modern practice has overturned.
- The times are far too longTwenty-five to forty-five minutes will reduce sliced cabbage to a grey, strong-smelling mash. Sliced or shredded cabbage in plenty of boiling salted water is done in 5 to 8 minutes; quartered wedges take 10 to 12. Everything the author says about colour, crispness and flavour is right — the clock is simply set wrong.
- Why ventilation mattersHeat and the vegetable's own enzymes break glucosinolates down into sulphur compounds, and the longer it cooks the more accumulate. Short cooking in plenty of water is the real fix; the author's own remedy is an open window, the period substitute for a range hood.
- Plenty of water, no lidA large stewpan means the biggest pot you own, half filled with water and kept at a hard rolling boil so the cabbage does not drop the water off the boil. The recipe does not specify a lid; leaving it uncovered lets the volatile sulphides escape rather than condense back in.
- The salt soakHalf an hour in cold water with a tablespoon of salt was insect insurance for garden and market cabbage. With supermarket heads a rinse is enough, though a soak does no harm.
- Mincing after boilingChopping the cooked cabbage in a wooden bowl, as directed here, was a common kitchen habit; a chef's knife on a board does the same job. Drain it well and press lightly, or the butter will not coat it and creamed cabbage will be watery.
- Salt pork'Mixed salt pork' means salt-cured pork of mixed lean and fat; the cut is not specified, and such cures are generally saltier than modern bacon. Boil it separately as directed and taste the liquid before adding more salt; with today's cuts an hour to an hour and a half is often enough for tenderness rather than the three or four hours given.
- Creamed cabbage, as givenThe recipe breaks off mid-sentence, before the butter and flour are used; presumably they thicken the hot milk. A teaspoonful of flour to half a pint of milk is a very thin sauce by modern standards, closer to creamed than gratin. Note also the half teaspoon of pepper, which is aggressive for a pint of cabbage.
- YieldA small head yields roughly a generous pint minced, which serves three or four as a side dish.
The insistence that cabbage is "one of our most useful vegetables" because it is available in late fall, winter and spring is the whole logic of the dish in a pre-refrigeration household: cabbage stored in a cellar or clamped under straw kept for months, while spinach and beans did not. The pairing with salt pork, bacon or corned-beef liquor is the same economy at work — both halves of the plate came from the winter store, and the meat did double duty as fat and seasoning for the vegetable. The passage is also a small snapshot of the period's nutritional science: household writers of this era had absorbed enough chemistry to blame sulphur compounds for indigestion and to prescribe quick, hard boiling and open windows as the remedy, even while their own recommended times ran several times longer than anything a cook would use now.