Home › Salads and Salad Dressing › Cabbage Salad
Cabbage Salad
Take one-half cabbage; six eggs; one teacup of sugar; one teaspoon of salt; two teaspoons of melted butter; one teaspoon of mustard; one-half teacup of vinegar. Cut the cabbage in two parts, and wash it well. Remove all wilted or tough leaves, cut out the core and chop very fine with a sharp knife. Boil the eggs hard, chop five of them very fine, place the cabbage in a salad bowl, add the chopped eggs, and toss and mix lightly together. Mix the sugar, salt, mustard, butter and vinegar well together and pour this liquid over the cabbage and eggs. Toss again lightly with a fork held in each hand; arrange in a dish, and garnish with the remaining egg cut in slices.
A plain chopped slaw bound with hard-boiled egg rather than mayonnaise. The proportions are the only real obstacle: as written the dressing is closer to a sweet pickle than a vinaigrette.
- The teacup measureA teacup in American books of this period is usually reckoned at around 6 fluid ounces rather than the 8 of a standard cup, though the measure was not standardised. On that reading the sugar is roughly 3/4 cup and the vinegar about 6 tablespoons.
- The sugar is the hingeThree-quarters of a cup of sugar against six tablespoons of vinegar makes a syrup rather than a vinaigrette; sweet-sour dressings of this kind were common in the period. Cooks who want a modern balance should start with 2 to 3 tablespoons and taste before adding more.
- MustardOne teaspoon of "mustard" here most likely means dry mustard powder, though prepared mustard was also on the market. Prepared yellow mustard will work but brings its own vinegar and salt, so cut back on both.
- Half a cabbageFigure a head of about 2 lb, so roughly 1 lb trimmed, or 6 to 8 cups once shredded. Anything much smaller will drown in the dressing.
- Melted butter in a cold saladTwo teaspoons of melted butter will set into flecks the moment it meets cold cabbage. Warm the vinegar mixture slightly before pouring, and dress the salad at room temperature rather than straight from the refrigerator.
- Chopping"Chop very fine with a sharp knife" gives a coarse, irregular texture quite unlike a mandoline shred, and it holds the egg better. A food processor turns the cabbage watery; use a knife.
- Standing timeThe recipe implies serving at once, and the salad is at its best within an hour. Longer than that and the salted, sugared dressing draws water from the cabbage and thins itself out.
- YieldServes six to eight as a side. Five chopped eggs is a generous amount of binding; four is enough if the cabbage is on the small side.
Chopped cabbage dressed with vinegar, sugar and mustard is generally traced to the same lineage as American coleslaw — the word itself comes from the Dutch koolsla, cabbage salad, carried into English through the Hudson Valley. Egg could be worked into such a salad in more than one way: cooked into a boiled dressing over the stove, or, as here, simply hard-boiled and chopped in. The Butterick Publishing Company, better known for dress patterns and The Delineator, issued its cook book as part of a broad line of household manuals aimed at middle-class women managing a kitchen without much staff, and this recipe fits that brief exactly: cheap winter vegetable, no cooking beyond boiling eggs, and no ingredient that would not already be in the house.