Salad, Red Cabbage
INGREDIENTS for large salad.-A small red cabbage, 2 teaspoonfuls of salt, ½ pint of vinegar, 3 teaspoonfuls of oil, a small quantity of cayenne-pepper. AVERAGE COST, 8d. Take off the outside leaves of a fresh red cabbage, and cut the remainder very finely into small thin slices. Mix with the cabbage the above salad ingredients, and let it remain for two days, when it will be fit for use. This salad will keep very well for a few days. The quantity of the ingredients may, of course, be a little varied, according to taste.
TIME.-2 days.
SEASONABLE in July and August.
This is a vinegar-dressed slaw left to soften and take colour for two days rather than a salad tossed at the table. Little needs changing beyond the vessel and where it stands.
- The vinegar quantityThe text gives the vinegar as a fraction of an imperial pint (20 fl oz) but the figure as printed is not usable. For a small red cabbage, somewhere between a quarter and a half pint — roughly 1/2 to 1 cup — will coat and lightly pickle it; add enough to wet the cabbage thoroughly rather than to submerge it.
- Cut it thinner than you thinkRed cabbage is dense and its ribs are woody. Shred on a mandoline or with a very sharp knife to about 2 mm; anything thicker will still be leathery after two days in the vinegar.
- Salt does the workTwo teaspoons of salt on one small cabbage draws out water, collapses the shreds and lets the vinegar penetrate. Toss well, then toss again after a few hours as liquid gathers in the bowl.
- Where it standsBeeton assumed a cool larder. Cover and keep it in the refrigerator for the two days; the acid and salt will preserve it, but a warm modern kitchen is not the environment the recipe was written for.
- Use a non-reactive bowlVinegar plus red cabbage will pit aluminium and take on a metallic taste from unlined copper or bare cast iron. Glass, glazed earthenware or stainless steel only.
- The oilThree teaspoons is a token amount by modern dressing standards, enough to gloss the cabbage rather than emulsify. A neutral oil or a mild olive oil suits; add more at serving if the salad tastes harsh.
- Seasonable in July and AugustThat reflects Victorian market gardening. Red cabbage is now sold year-round, and the firm, heavy heads of late autumn and winter are the better buy.
- Yield and servingA small red cabbage should give in the region of a pound of shredded leaf, which the book's own heading ("for large salad") suggests is meant to serve a table rather than one or two. Sharp and keeping rather than delicate, it sits more naturally beside cold beef, pork, ham or sausages than as a course on its own, though the recipe itself says nothing about how to serve it.
Red cabbage has been the English pickling cabbage for centuries, valued as much for the colour vinegar brings out of it — the leaf pigment turns from blue-purple to bright magenta in acid — as for the flavour. Beeton's book treats "salad" broadly: alongside dressed lettuce it includes keeping preparations like this one, which sit for days and behave more like a quick pickle than a green salad. A preparation that keeps for days suggests a household in which something sharp might be on hand to cut the richness of cold meat, though how habitual that was is not something the recipe itself tells us. The costing of 8d is characteristic of the book's insistence that every dish be priced, part of what made it a manual for managing a house rather than simply a collection of receipts.