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Scalloped Cabbage with Cheese
1 small head cabbage 2 cups grated cheese 1 1/2 cup medium white sauce 1/2 to 3/4 cup bread-crums Shred the cabbage and cook for twenty minutes. Into a greased baking-dish, put a layer of cabbage, then a layer of cheese, then a layer of white sauce, and continue to add layers until the ingredients are all used. Cover the top of the mixture with the crums, which may be mixed with a little melted butter, and bake in a moderate oven (350 degrees F.) for about twenty minutes, or until the crums are brown.
A plain layered gratin from the era when white sauce was the standard binder for almost any vegetable. The one thing worth changing is the cabbage's first cooking time.
- Undercook the cabbageTwenty minutes of boiling leaves shredded cabbage limp and sulphurous before it ever reaches the oven. Five to eight minutes in salted water is enough; it finishes cooking in the baking dish. Drain it well, and press it lightly, or the sauce will thin out.
- Medium white sauceIn this period that means 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour cooked together, then 1 cup milk, seasoned with salt and pepper. For the 1 1/2 cups called for, scale to 3 tablespoons each of butter and flour with 1 1/2 cups milk.
- The ovenThe recipe gives 350F, which is right. Twenty minutes brings the crumbs to colour; if the dish has cooled while you assembled it, allow closer to 30 minutes so the centre is hot through.
- Which cheese"Grated cheese" unqualified in an American household book of this period generally means firm store cheese, that is, cheddar. Two cups grated is roughly 6 to 8 ounces. A sharp cheddar stands up better against the plain sauce than a mild one.
- CrumbsDry crumbs work better here than soft fresh ones, though the recipe does not specify. Toss the 1/2 to 3/4 cup with 1 to 2 tablespoons melted butter so they brown evenly instead of drying out in patches.
- AssemblyFinish with sauce rather than cheese under the crumb layer; cheese exposed at the top of the dish tends to seize and go oily before the crumbs colour.
- YieldA small head of cabbage with this much sauce and cheese will roughly fill a 1 1/2-quart dish; figure on about four portions as a main course or six as a side.