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Charleston Cabbage (Water and boil two hours When)
water and boil two hours. When done, carefully remove the cloth, stand the cabbage in a deep, round dish, pour over it Cream Sauce and serve very hot.
The page picks up mid-recipe: what survives is the boiling, unmoulding and saucing of a whole cabbage tied in a cloth. The method is recoverable, but the timing is the part no modern cook should copy.
- The text is a fragmentThe opening lines are missing. In this style of recipe a trimmed whole head is tied up in a cloth or napkin and lowered into boiling salted water; what remains here begins at that point.
- Two hours is far too longThis is the hinge. A whole cabbage head is tender at 25 to 40 minutes depending on size; wedges take 12 to 18. Two hours reduces it to grey pulp.
- The clothIts only job is to hold the head together so it can be turned out whole. Wet the cloth first and tie it loosely enough that water circulates. Cheesecloth doubled, or a clean cotton napkin, works; loosen the knot before lifting so the head does not tear.
- Salt and volumeUse a pot deep enough to cover the head, water salted at roughly a tablespoon per four quarts, and keep it at a steady boil rather than a rolling one so the head is not knocked apart.
- Cream SauceIn cookery of this period this ordinarily means a plain white sauce, not whipped or soured cream. A workable version: 2 tablespoons butter cooked with 2 tablespoons flour, then 1 cup of milk or thin cream whisked in, simmered until it coats a spoon, seasoned with salt and a little white pepper or nutmeg. Have it ready before the cabbage comes out.
- DrainingA boiled head holds a surprising amount of water, which will thin the sauce in the dish. Let it drain in the cloth for a minute or two, cut side down if it was halved, before setting it in the serving dish.
- YieldOne medium head, about 2 lb, serves four to six as a side. Serve it very hot, as directed; cream sauce on cooling cabbage sets and dulls quickly.
Sarah Tyson Rorer's How to Cook Vegetables came out of the Philadelphia Cooking School at a moment when American cookery writers were trying to rescue vegetables from the long, hard boil that had been standard practice for generations, and this recipe shows the transition only half made: the technique of tying a head in a cloth and dressing it with a white sauce is genteel, the two-hour boil is not. Regional names like this one usually attach to a variety rather than a city recipe, and the pointed, conical-headed Charleston Wakefield type of cabbage " a larger late strain of Jersey Wakefield " was widely sold to American market gardeners in exactly this period. Serving a whole vegetable upright in a deep dish under sauce was a way of giving a cheap food the presentation of a made dish, which is much of what Rorer's book was for.