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Puree of Cabbage and Potatoes
1 pint boiled and minced cabbage 6 medium-sized potatoes 2 tablespoons butter 2 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon pepper 1/2 pint hot milk Peel the potatoes, and put them in a saucepan with enough boiling water to cover them. Cook just thirty minutes. Pour off the water, and mash fine and light. Beat in the hot milk, seasoning and cabbage. Cook about five minutes longer.
A plain mash extended with cabbage, from the era when a starchy vegetable dish was offered as the centre of a meatless dinner. It comes together quickly if the cabbage is cooked ahead.
- The cabbage comes precookedThe pint of "boiled and minced cabbage" is a separate step the recipe assumes you have done. Boil or steam about half a small head until tender, drain it very well, then chop it fine — wet cabbage will slacken the mash.
- A pint is two cupsTwo cups of cooked minced cabbage, and half a pint of hot milk is one cup. Six medium potatoes runs roughly 2 to 2 1/4 lb.
- Thirty minutes is for whole potatoesThirty minutes is a long boil -- The recipe says only to peel the potatoes and cover them with boiling water; it never directs you to cut them, which probably accounts for the long time. Cut into chunks they will be done in 15 to 20 minutes; test with a knife rather than trusting the clock.
- Warm the milk, alwaysWarm the milk -- The recipe already specifies hot milk. Cold milk beaten into hot potato cools the mash below serving temperature, so heating it is not fussiness.
- Salt with a light handTwo teaspoons of salt for this quantity is on the high side by current taste. Start with one teaspoon and correct at the end.
- Choose a floury potatoRussets or another mealy variety mash light; waxy potatoes turn dense and sticky under beating. Variety matters as much as technique to the recipe's "mash fine and light."
- The final five minutesKeep it over low heat and stir, or set the pan over barely simmering water. A thick puree will catch and scorch on the bottom of the pan if left unstirred.
- YieldServes four to six as a main dish, more as a side. It reheats well with a splash of extra milk.
Meatless cookbooks of the early twentieth century were not written for vegetarians so much as for households economising, for Lenten and Friday tables, and later for the wartime meat-conservation campaigns that urged families to eat less beef and pork. Dishes like this one were meant to occupy the centre of the plate, filling and cheap, rather than sit beside a roast. The pairing of potato and cabbage is far older than the book and turns up across northern Europe in many forms — the Irish colcannon, the Dutch and Flemish stamppot, the English bubble and squeak made from the previous day's leftovers. What distinguishes this version is the word puree: milk beaten in and the whole thing cooked smooth, in the manner of the French-influenced cookery that American domestic writers of the period were fond of borrowing, even for a dish built from two of the cheapest vegetables in the market.