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Cabbage Boiled Without Bacon
Prepare exactly as directed in the foregoing recipe. Boil an hour in a large pot of boiling water. Drain, chop fine, add a tablespoonful butter, the same of cream, the same of pepper-vinegar, and salt and pepper to your taste.--Mrs. S. T.
A plain buttered cabbage from a book where nearly every green vegetable otherwise arrives boiled with a piece of side meat. The recipe leans on the one before it for preparation, and on a condiment most kitchens no longer keep.
- The missing first step"Prepare exactly as directed in the foregoing recipe" sends the reader back to the preceding cabbage recipe for the preparation, which is not repeated here. In practice: trim the outer leaves and quarter the head so it cooks evenly. Older instructions often called for a soak in cold salted water to draw out insects; that is no longer necessary with supermarket cabbage.
- An hour is far too longCabbage boiled a full hour turns grey, sulphurous and slack. Quartered cabbage is tender in 8 to 12 minutes in well-salted boiling water; a whole head takes closer to 20. Expectations of texture in boiled vegetables have shifted entirely since this was written.
- Pepper-vinegarA Southern pantry staple: hot green or red peppers steeped in cider vinegar until the vinegar takes the heat. Thin, vinegar-based bottled pepper sauce of the Louisiana type is the closest thing on a modern shelf, though usually hotter, so start with less and taste. Plain cider vinegar with a pinch of cayenne will stand in.
- Drain hardBoiled cabbage holds a surprising amount of water, and the tablespoon each of butter and cream will be lost in it. Press the chopped cabbage in the colander, or return it to the dry pot over low heat for a minute before dressing.
- Chop fineThe recipe wants the cabbage chopped small and dressed, not served in wedges. Chop after draining, on a board, rather than trying to cut it in the pot.
- ScaleThe recipe gives no quantity of cabbage. One tablespoon each of butter and cream is a modest dressing, suited to a small head; for a large head, increase the enrichment and taste before adding more vinegar.
The title is the point. In nineteenth-century Virginia cookery cabbage was, one might reasonably suppose, more often than not boiled with bacon, side meat or a ham hock, and a version without it may well have needed to announce itself, though the reasons can only be guessed at. What replaces the pork here is butter, cream and acid, the same trio that dresses cabbage across northern Europe, and the pepper-vinegar supplies the sharp note that the salt-cured meat would otherwise have given. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1879, gathered contributions from named and initialled Virginia housekeepers, which is why the recipe ends with "Mrs. S. T." rather than a source.