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Cabbage Pudding
Boil nice, hard, white cabbage with good bacon.
When thoroughly done, chop fine and add a large lump or butter, one teacup rich milk, three eggs beaten light, two teaspoonfuls mixed mustard; pepper and salt to the taste.
Pour in a buttered deep dish; put on top dusted pepper, bits of fresh butter, and grated cracker or stale bread.
Bake a light brown.--Mrs. M. C. C.
Cabbage Pudding.
Boil the cabbage till tender, chop fine and add four eggs, well beaten, one pound bread crumbs, one teacup melted butter, milk enough to make it as thick as mush, salt and pepper to the taste. Bake in a dish till the eggs and milk are cooked.--Mrs. McD.
Two versions of the same idea: boiled cabbage bound with egg and custard, baked as a savory pudding. Both assume a cook who knows what a set custard looks like.
- Oven temperatureNeither version gives a heat. Bake at 350F; the pudding is done when the center is set and no longer wobbles, roughly 35-45 minutes in a deep dish. "Bake a light brown" is the visual cue for the first version's crumb topping.
- A teacupTeacup measures of this period were smaller than a modern measuring cup, commonly reckoned at somewhere between half a cup and three-quarters; the book does not define it. The second recipe's teacup of melted butter is a great deal of fat by current taste; half that will still bind and enrich.
- A large lump of butterRead this as 2 to 3 tablespoons. The quantity was simply left to the cook's judgment, as such vague butter measures generally were.
- Boiling with baconThe first version picks up much of its seasoning from the bacon it boiled with, so salt lightly at the end and taste. A slab of streaky bacon in the water will season the cabbage, and 20-25 minutes is enough to bring it tender.
- Squeeze the cabbageThis is the hinge. Chopped boiled cabbage holds a surprising amount of water, and if it goes into the dish wet the custard will weep and never set. Press it firmly in a colander or wring it in a towel before mixing in the eggs.
- Grated crackerCrackers of this period were generally hard and plain, closer to a water biscuit than a modern saltine, though salted soda crackers also existed. Dry breadcrumbs or coarsely crushed unsalted crackers give the same texture on top.
- Bread crumbs in the second versionA pound of crumbs is a lot against four eggs, and "as thick as mush" is the real instruction: add milk until the mixture is loose enough to spread but not pourable. Use dry crumbs, not fresh, or the pudding turns pasty.
- Mixed mustardPrepared mustard, meaning dry mustard already worked to a paste with water or vinegar. Two teaspoons of a plain English or Dijon-style mustard is the intent, not a sweet yellow condiment.
- YieldEither version fills a 1 1/2- to 2-quart baking dish and serves six as a side, four as a supper dish. Both are better warm than hot from the oven.
Cabbage puddings of this kind belong to a broad family of English and Anglo-American savory puddings in which a cooked vegetable is chopped, bound with egg and milk, and baked -- the same logic behind corn pudding, squash pudding and the many "mock" dishes of the period. Housekeeping in Old Virginia (1878), compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree from contributions by Virginia housewives, prints recipes largely as they were submitted, which is why two women's versions of the same dish sit side by side under one heading with no attempt to reconcile them. The initialed attributions -- Mrs. M. C. C., Mrs. McD. -- are typical of community cookbooks, where a reader might be expected to know the household behind the recipe. Boiling cabbage with bacon is the oldest gesture here, long standard across the Upper South and still a common treatment of greens and cabbage in the region; baking the result into a custard is the genteel refinement, turning a plain boiled vegetable into something that could be sent to table in a dish.