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Cabbage Salad
Chop white cabbage, season with salt and vinegar, make in smooth shape in a flat dish and pour dressing over (see celery salad.) Strew chopped beets on top.
The Italian and French cooks don't take kindly to slaw either cold or hot--seem not to understand it, or they think it barbarous and uncouth--and many of them will never make it of their own free will and volition. Perhaps they would like it better if they only knew that slaa has come down in direct descent from their own salade and sallet. And they ought to perceive that hot hollandaise sauce, which they are used to.
A bare-bones slaw from a book written for hotel and restaurant cooks, who were expected to fill in the gaps. The instructions assume you have already read the celery salad entry, since that is where the dressing lives.
- The missing dressing"See celery salad" points to a cross-reference this page does not carry. Dressings of this kind in period books tend to be either a cooked boiled dressing (egg yolks, vinegar, mustard, butter, thickened over water) or a plain oil-and-vinegar French dressing; either suits shredded cabbage, but the recipe as printed gives no quantity.
- Salt first, then drainSalt and vinegar -- The text simply says to season the chopped cabbage with salt and vinegar, with no standing time given. Salt and vinegar will draw water out of shredded cabbage if it is left to stand, so draining or squeezing before dressing may keep the salad from thinning on the plate; that step is not in the original.
- "White cabbage"An ordinary green head cabbage with tight pale leaves, not savoy and not Napa. Quarter it, cut out the core, and shred fine on a mandoline or with a knife.
- "Smooth shape in a flat dish"This is a service instruction, not a cooking one. Note the order given: the cabbage is made into a smooth low mound in a shallow dish first, and the dressing is poured over it, so it can be cut into neat portions.
- The beetsCooked beets, chopped fine, used as a garnish band or scatter. Add them at the last moment; their juice bleeds pink through the whole dish if they sit in it.
- YieldA medium head, about 2 lb trimmed, gives roughly 8 side portions.
- The text breaks offThe final sentence about hollandaise ends mid-thought in the original. Nothing is missing from the recipe itself; the digression simply stops.
The etymology the author reaches for is broadly right: slaw comes into American English from Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad, and salad and the older English sallet both descend from Latin sal, salt, for the salted dressing rather than the leaves. The rest is trade grievance. The beet garnish and the pressed flat mound are the tell that this is restaurant work: cheap cabbage arranged to look composed, and to portion cleanly for a crowd.