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Scalloped Cabbage with Cheese
1 small head cabbage
1½ cup medium white sauce
2 cups grated cheese
½ to ¾ 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° F.) for about twenty minutes, or until the crums are brown.
A straightforward gratin that needs almost no translation, though the cabbage timing and the sauce quantity both reward a second look.
- Cook the cabbage lessTwenty minutes of boiling shredded cabbage gives a grey, sulphurous mush. Five to seven minutes in salted boiling water, or the same steamed, leaves it tender with some bite; it will soften further in the oven.
- Drain it hardThe single thing that decides whether this dish works. Press the cooked cabbage in a colander or spread it on a towel — any retained water thins the sauce and floods the dish.
- Medium white saucePeriod terminology for a béchamel of roughly 2 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons flour per cup of milk. Half a cup is meagre for a full head of cabbage; a cup to a cup and a half distributes far better without making the dish soupy.
- Two cups of cheeseThe recipe says only 'grated cheese'; a dry aged Cheddar or similar hard cheese is the likely intent. Two cups grated is roughly 6 to 8 oz depending on how loosely it is packed. Pre-shredded bagged cheese carries anti-caking starch and melts less cleanly.
- Bread-crumsDry crumbs from stale bread, not fresh soft crumbs and not fine commercial crumbs. Tossing them with a tablespoon or two of melted butter, as the recipe suggests, is what browns them.
- Oven and timingThe 350°F is given outright, alongside the older 'moderate oven'. Twenty minutes is enough to melt the cheese and colour the top if the components go into the dish hot; if they have cooled, allow 30 to 35 minutes, or finish under the broiler.
- YieldA small head of cabbage with this much cheese serves four as a main course or six as a side.
Butterick published this in the era when the sewing-pattern company was also selling domestic advice to the same middle-class households, and the recipe shows the two hallmarks of that moment: a white sauce as the default binder for almost any vegetable, and a printed Fahrenheit temperature. That printed number belongs to the broader shift in cookbooks from "a moderate oven" to actual numbers. Cabbage itself needed the help – disliked when boiled to death – so scalloping it with cheese and crumbs was a standard way of dressing up a plain winter vegetable.