Cold Slaw
Select a small, compact cabbage; strip off the outside leaves and cut the head in quarters. With a sharp knife slice very thin; soak in cold water until crisp; drain and dry between clean towels. Mix with hot dressing and serve when cold.
A bare-bones cabbage salad that assumes you already have a cooked dressing on hand. Two things carry the dish: the cabbage must be cut thinner than seems reasonable, and it must be bone dry before dressing.
- The hinge is dry cabbageWater clinging to the shreds thins the dressing and the slaw turns watery in the bowl within minutes. After the cold soak, drain hard and press between towels, or spin it in a salad spinner and then blot.
- Slice thinner than you think"Very thin" here means near-translucent, on the order of 1/16 inch. Quarter the head, cut out the core, then shave on a mandoline or with the widest, sharpest knife you have; a food processor slicing disc also works, a grating disc does not.
- The cold soakThe recipe gives no time; twenty to thirty minutes in cold water is usually enough to crisp the shreds. Judge by the cabbage in front of you rather than the clock, as the recipe does: soak until crisp.
- "Hot dressing" means a cooked dressingIn a book of this period this is most likely a boiled dressing, typically along the lines of egg, vinegar, sugar, mustard and a little butter or cream thickened over heat — not mayonnaise, which would break when poured hot. The recipe itself specifies nothing. Any modern boiled or cooked salad dressing recipe will do; start with about 3/4 cup for a small head and add to taste.
- Pour hot, serve coldThe hot dressing lightly wilts the surface of the shreds and clings to them as it cools. The recipe says to mix with hot dressing and serve when cold, so dress while hot and then chill before serving.
- YieldA small compact cabbage is about 1 1/2 to 2 lb and gives 6 to 8 servings as a side.
- KeepingBest the day it is made. By the second day the dressing will have drawn liquid out of the cabbage, so it needs draining and a spoonful of fresh dressing.
"Cold slaw" is not a description but a reshaping of an unfamiliar word. The dish came to American tables from Dutch settlers as koolsla, literally cabbage salad, which English speakers wrote variously as "cole slaw" and, taking the salad to be served cold, "cold slaw." Both spellings ran side by side through nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cookbooks; Mrs. Fryer's is simply following one of them. The hot cooked dressing is the older American treatment, predating the commercial mayonnaise that spread from the 1910s and largely displaced it by the 1930s: eggs and vinegar thickened over heat were cheaper and kept better in an unrefrigerated pantry, and a cooked dressing was commonly what was meant by "salad dressing" well into the century.