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Cole Slaw
6 cups shredded cabbage 1/3 cup sour cream juice 1/2 lemon 5 teaspoons sugar 2 tablespoons salt pepper Toss together well and chill before serving on bed of crisp lettuce leaves.
A minimal 1930s-style slaw: no mayonnaise, no boiled dressing, just sour cream sharpened with lemon. The proportions need a look before you start.
- The salt is out of proportionTwo tablespoons of salt to six cups of shredded cabbage is several times what the dish will carry as written, and may well be a misprint. Salt to taste instead, starting with about a teaspoon, and add more only after the slaw has sat.
- Cabbage quantitySix cups shredded is about one pound of trimmed cabbage, or a small head. Shred it fine, on a mandoline or with a long knife, since there is little dressing to soften coarse pieces.
- The dressing is deliberately scantA third of a cup of sour cream for a pound of cabbage coats rather than pools. If you want it wetter, add cream a spoonful at a time rather than doubling the sour cream, which will turn the whole thing heavy.
- Sour cream then and nowHome-soured or less standardised cream of the period may well have been thinner and sharper than today's cultured product. Full-fat modern sour cream will need the lemon juice to loosen it; whisk the two together before they meet the cabbage.
- Sugar and lemonFive teaspoons of sugar to the juice of half a lemon is a sweet-leaning balance typical of the era. Taste after mixing and adjust with more lemon if it reads as dessert-like.
- ChillingAn hour in the refrigerator is enough for the flavours to meet. Much longer and the salt draws water out of the cabbage, leaving a puddle and limp shreds; drain and re-toss if that happens.
- YieldServes four to six as a side. The lettuce bed is a plating convention of the period and can be skipped without loss.
Slaw comes from the Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad, which entered American English as "cole slaw" and was long recast as "cold slaw" — an understandable slip, since it is usually served chilled. Cream-dressed versions predate the mayonnaise-bound slaw that dominates today; before commercial mayonnaise became a pantry staple in the early twentieth century, sour cream, plain cream with vinegar, or a cooked dressing were common binders, and sour-cream slaw survived as the lighter, sharper option. Cabbage earned its place in books of this kind because it was cheap, storable through winter, and one of the few salad vegetables reliably available before year-round produce shipping.