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Southern Cabbage
Chop or slice one medium-sized cabbage fine, put it in a stewpan with boiling water to well cover it, and boil fifteen minutes; drain off all water, and add a dressing made as follows: Half teacup wine-vinegar, two-thirds as much sugar, salt, pepper, half teaspoon mustard, and two tea-spoons salad oil; when this is boiling hot, add one tea-cup cream, and one egg stirred together; mix thoroughly and immediately with the cabbage, and cook a moment. Serve hot.-Mrs. P. T. Morey, Charleston, S. C.
A hot sweet-sour cream dressing folded into just-drained cabbage. The dressing is a thin custard, so heat control at the end is the whole job.
- The hinge: do not let the egg boilOnce the cup of cream and the egg go into the boiling vinegar mixture, the pan should come off high heat. Stir constantly and give it only the "moment" the recipe allows, or the egg scrambles and the dressing breaks into curds and whey.
- Temper the eggBeat the egg into the cold cream thoroughly before adding, and add the mixture in a slow stream while stirring. Vinegar plus heat plus dairy is an easy curdle; the cream's fat is the only insurance.
- Teacup measureThe teacup is a genuinely loose measure in period American books, commonly reckoned at somewhere between 4 and 6 fl oz. Half a teacup of vinegar is therefore roughly 2 to 3 fl oz (4 to 6 tablespoons), and two-thirds as much sugar about 3 to 4 tablespoons.
- Fifteen minutes is too longBoiled that hard, shredded cabbage turns gray and sulfurous. Five to seven minutes in well-salted boiling water gives tender cabbage that still has body, which matters here because it has to stand up to a wet dressing.
- Drain it dry"Drain off all water" is doing real work. Press the cabbage in the colander or the dressing will thin out and pool in the bottom of the dish.
- Salad oilIn 1880s American usage this means olive oil, or later a bland cottonseed or corn oil. Any neutral oil works; two teaspoons is a small amount and mostly there for gloss.
- MustardHalf a teaspoon of dry mustard powder, not prepared mustard. If you use jarred mustard, use about double and expect more vinegar in the balance.
- YieldOne medium cabbage feeds four to six as a side. Serve it straight from the pan; it does not hold well, as the dressing continues to thin as it sits.
This is a hot slaw, the sweet-sour cream-and-egg dressing that runs through nineteenth-century American cookery from Pennsylvania German kitchens south along the routes of German settlement. The same dressing appears elsewhere in period books poured over lettuce, dandelion greens or potatoes; the technique is closer to a boiled salad dressing than to anything with mayonnaise in it, since commercial mayonnaise did not yet exist and cooks thickened with egg and cream over direct heat. The Dixie Cook Book was assembled in the same manner as its ancestor, the Buckeye Cookery volumes, by gathering signed contributions from named housekeepers, which is why this one carries Mrs. Morey's name and her Charleston address. Calling it "Southern Cabbage" was largely a matter of the book's framing rather than any regional peculiarity in the dish itself.