Home › Fireless Cookery › Boiled Cabbage
Boiled Cabbage
Remove outside leaves; cut into quarters and cut out tough center. Put into kettle and cover with boiling salted water; allow to boil for ten minutes without cover. Cover and place in cooker for one hour. Season with butter, salt and pepper, or serve with cream sauce.
This is a fireless-cooker recipe: the cabbage is brought to a hard boil on the range, then transferred to an insulated box to finish on residual heat. The method translates directly to a modern heavy pot with the burner turned off, or to a slow cooker on high.
- What a "cooker" isA fireless cooker was an insulated wooden or metal chest lined with hay, felt or asbestos, into which a sealed kettle of boiling food was packed to coast to doneness. Some models also took a separately heated soapstone or metal disc, but this recipe calls for none: the hour of cooking comes from the water already boiling in the pot.
- Substituting equipmentA heavy Dutch oven with a tight lid, wrapped in a towel and left off the heat, holds temperature well enough for the same effect. Water in a covered pot drops below simmering fairly quickly, so expect softer, milder cabbage rather than anything crisp.
- The uncovered ten minutesBoiling cabbage open to the air is the one instruction worth keeping. The sulphur compounds released as the leaves heat drive off with the steam instead of condensing back into the pot, which is what keeps boiled cabbage from smelling and tasting rank.
- Timing by modern tasteAn hour after boiling gives thoroughly soft, old-fashioned cabbage. Cabbage quarters cooked straight through on the stove are tender in 10 to 15 minutes, so if you want texture, stop there and skip the holding period.
- "Kettle"Here a kettle is simply a lidded cooking pot, not a tea kettle. It needs to be deep enough for boiling water to cover the quarters and to take a well-fitting lid for the hour of coasting.
- Salting the waterNo quantity is given. A teaspoon to a tablespoon of salt per quart of water is a reasonable modern reading; season to taste.
- Cream sauceThe alternative finish is a basic white sauce: 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons flour, 1 cup milk, cooked until it thickens and seasoned with salt, pepper and often a grating of nutmeg. Drain the cabbage well or the sauce will thin on the plate.
- YieldThe recipe names no quantity. A medium head, about 2 pounds, will serve roughly four as a side dish.
Fireless cookery had a real vogue in American households between about 1905 and the early 1920s, promoted in cookbooks and women's magazines as a fuel-saving method for the coal or wood range: bring the pot to a boil, then let insulation do the rest while the fire went out. Commercial cookers were sold, and homemade versions packed with hay were a staple of extension-service pamphlets. Cabbage was an obvious candidate, since it is cheap, keeps all winter in a cellar, and wants long gentle heat rather than close attention. The instruction to boil it uncovered before sealing it away reflects long-standing kitchen lore about venting the sulphurous steam of the brassicas. Insulated thermal cookers working on the same principle are still sold today.