Cold Slaw
As served with raw oysters and sometimes with roast turkey or wild fowls instead of water cress, cold slaw is simply tender white cabbage shred as fine as it is possible to shred it. Served in place of salad at dinner it has only vinegar poured over it.
About as spare as a recipe gets: the whole method is in the word "shred." A few notes on getting the texture and the dressing right.
- The hinge is the cut"As fine as it is possible to shred it" is the entire dish. Quarter and core the cabbage, then cut across the grain with a sharp knife or a mandoline set thin; anything coarser eats like raw cabbage rather than slaw.
- What "white cabbage" meansThe dense pale green head sold as green or Dutch cabbage, not savoy and not napa. Use the tight inner leaves and keep the tough dark outer ones for soup.
- Cold slaw, not coleslawThe name here is the old anglicisation of Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad, misheard as "cold slaw." It carries no mayonnaise or boiled dressing in this version.
- The vinegarCider vinegar suits the period; plain distilled white is sharper and thinner. Dress it at the table or shortly before serving, since salted and acidulated cabbage begins to weep within the hour.
- Season it anywayThe text gives vinegar alone. A little salt and a few grinds of pepper make the difference between a dressed salad and wet cabbage, and a pinch of sugar takes the edge off a harsh vinegar.
- QuantityA medium head, about 2 lb trimmed, shreds down to roughly eight side servings — enough for a platter of oysters or a turkey for the same number.
Cold slaw came into American English from Dutch koolsla, literally cabbage salad, and the folk-etymology spelling stuck through much of the nineteenth century. Its place here, alongside raw oysters and roast wild fowl, is the point: the dish is functioning as a sharp raw relish rather than a creamy salad, the same role watercress plays in the sentence it appears in. That pairing is worth noticing, since the recipe exists less as a composed salad than as a garnish a professional kitchen would need to turn out quickly and in quantity, which is cheap in winter when greens are not, and needs nothing but a cruet of vinegar to finish.