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Boiled Cabbage
Take off outside leaves, cut in quarters, and remove tough stalk. Soak in cold water and cook in an uncovered vessel in boiling salted water, to which is added one-fourth teaspoon soda; this prevents disagreeable odor during cooking. Cook from thirty minutes to one hour, drain, and serve ; or chop, and season with butter, salt, and pepper.
A plain nineteenth-century treatment that boils cabbage far longer than anyone would today. The instructions are sound in structure; only the timing and the soda need rethinking.
- The timing is the problemThirty to sixty minutes turns cabbage grey, limp and sulphurous. Quartered wedges are done in 8-12 minutes in boiling water, shredded cabbage in 4-6; test the thickest part of the core with a knife tip.
- Why long cooking smellsThe odor the recipe tries to suppress comes from sulphur-containing compounds in the cabbage breaking down under heat, and it builds the longer the pot sits on the stove. Short cooking is a more effective preventive than any additive.
- The quarter-teaspoon of sodaBaking soda keeps the green color and softens the leaves, but it also destroys vitamin C and thiamine and leaves the texture slippery. Leave it out.
- Uncovered vesselThis part is worth keeping. An open pot lets the volatile sulphur compounds escape rather than condensing back into the water.
- The cold soakA soak in cold water crisps the leaves and floats out any insects hidden in the head, which mattered more with unwashed market cabbage than with a supermarket one. It is optional now.
- Salt and water volumeUse plenty of water, well salted, around a tablespoon of salt per four quarts, and keep it at a full boil so the cabbage does not stew.
- DrainingDrain thoroughly and let the wedges steam dry for a minute before buttering, or the seasoning slides off into a pool of water on the plate.
- YieldA head of about 2 lb will serve roughly four to six as a side dish; the recipe itself gives no yield.
Boiled cabbage is one of the oldest vegetable preparations in the English-speaking kitchen, and this is the same brisk, unsentimental treatment given to boiled turnip or beet. The soda trick was common in Victorian and Edwardian cookery, recommended both for color and, as here, for smell; it fell out of favour later, once the loss of vitamins in alkaline water was understood. The long cooking time reflects an era when vegetables were generally boiled to complete softness, and when cabbage arriving from storage cellars in late winter was tougher and coarser than the tight, young heads sold now.