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Princess Cabbage
1 small head cabbage 2 cups milk 1 tablespoon flour 1 tablespoon shortening 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon pepper 1 cup buttered crumbs Chop coarsely the head of cabbage and cover with ice water for one hour. Drain and add milk and sufficient water to cover, and cook for 30 minutes. Drain again and add to the liquid, the flour, shortening and seasoning. Cook until thick. Mix with the cabbage, cover with the buttered crumbs and bake in a hot oven (400 degrees F.) until brown, about 20 minutes. Serves 6.
A plain scalloped cabbage in white sauce, typical of the era's economical vegetable dishes. Two things need attention: the amount of liquid left for the sauce, and how long the cabbage cooks.
- The sauce is the hingeOne tablespoon each of flour and fat will thicken about one cup of liquid, not the two cups of milk plus enough water to cover a whole head. Drain off all but roughly a cup of the cooking liquid before you thicken it, or the dish will bake out watery.
- Cook the flour and fat firstAs written the flour goes straight into the hot liquid and will lump. Melt the shortening, stir in the flour, cook it a minute, then whisk in the reserved liquid off the boil.
- Thirty minutes is too longCoarsely chopped cabbage is tender in 8 to 10 minutes at a bare simmer, and it still has 20 minutes in the oven ahead of it. Half an hour of boiling develops the sulphurous smell and leaves the cabbage grey and slack.
- Milk and cabbageKeep the pan below a rolling boil. Milk cooked hard with cabbage catches on the bottom and can curdle; a low simmer, or scalding the milk separately and using water to cook the cabbage, avoids both.
- ShorteningHere that means lard or a vegetable shortening. Butter gives a better white sauce and costs nothing in texture.
- Buttered crumbsNot a packaged product: about a cup of soft fresh breadcrumbs tossed with 2 to 3 tablespoons of melted butter until evenly coated, so they brown rather than scorch.
- The ice-water hourOptional by modern standards. It firms and freshens older, limp cabbage; a fresh head off the shelf gains little, so skip it if you are short of time.
- Oven and dish400F is given, which is right. Use a shallow 1 1/2 to 2 quart baking dish so the crumb layer is broad and browns evenly. Serves 6 as a side.
Scalloped cabbage under a genteel name belongs to a long American line of dishes that made a cheap, strong-flavoured winter vegetable respectable by binding it in white sauce and crumbs. The formula -- boil, drain, bind with a flour-and-fat sauce, crumb the top, brown -- was applied to onions, celery, potatoes and salsify alike in household cookery. Decorative names such as "Princess" were commonly attached to plain vegetable dishes in printed cookery of the period, though no particular origin for this one is recorded. The soaking in ice water suggests cabbage that had come from a cellar or a market stall rather than refrigerated transport, and may have needed reviving before cooking.