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Dressed Cabbage
Mrs. B. J. Seward.
One small teacup of vinegar, one egg, two tablespoons of sugar, one teaspoon of salt, and butter half the size of an egg; beat the egg before mixing with the other ingredients, which should be previously put over the fire, then put in the egg; stir until it boils; cool and pour over chopped or shaved cabbage. (CAULIFLOWER Mrs. C. Belford.
Remove the leaves ; cut the main stock close to the flower; lay it in boiling milk and water slightly salted, with the stalk down; when done, take out carefully and drain in a colander, then place in the vegetable dish and pour over it a rich drawn butter dressing.
Two entries run together here: a boiled vinegar-and-egg dressing for cabbage, and a plainly cooked cauliflower finished with drawn butter. Both are straightforward once the old measures are settled.
- The hinge: temper the eggThe original has you heat the vinegar mixture first, then add the beaten egg and stir until it boils. Add a ladle of the hot vinegar to the beaten egg first and whisk, then return it all to the pan, or the egg will scramble in the acid. Stir constantly over medium-low heat until it thickens and just bubbles.
- "One small teacup"A Victorian teacup is usually reckoned at about 3/4 cup, and a "small" one less; anywhere from 1/2 to 3/4 cup of vinegar is a fair reading. This is genuinely imprecise, so start at 1/2 cup and judge by taste, since the dressing is sharp by design.
- Butter half the size of an eggAbout 1 oz, or 2 tablespoons. The original puts the butter in the pan with the vinegar, sugar and salt, all heated before the beaten egg goes in.
- Vinegar strengthNineteenth-century household cider vinegar varied in strength and would not reliably have matched the standard 5 percent product on shelves now. If yours tastes fierce, cut it with a spoonful or two of water rather than adding more sugar.
- YieldThe dressing coats roughly one small head of cabbage, finely shaved, serving four to six. Pour it over cool, not warm, so the cabbage keeps some crispness; it also keeps several days refrigerated.
- Cauliflower: boiling milk and waterMilk was commonly used to keep the head white. Half milk, half water, slightly salted as the original directs, with the stalk down. Fifteen minutes at a simmer is plenty for a modern head, which is tender well before the older recipes assumed.
- Drawn butterNot simply melted butter. Period drawn butter is a light flour-and-butter sauce loosened with the cooking liquid or hot water, closer to a thin bechamel. Roughly 2 tablespoons butter, 1 tablespoon flour, a cup of liquid, seasoned with salt.
Boiled dressings of this kind, built on vinegar, egg and a little sugar rather than oil, are often said to have been the usual American salad dressing through much of the nineteenth century. Salad oil was expensive, frequently imported and inclined to go rancid in a warm pantry, while vinegar, eggs and butter were on hand in most households; the cooked egg gave body that oil would otherwise have supplied. The result is generally regarded as a forerunner of the sweet-sour dressings still used on coleslaw and wilted lettuce in the American Midwest and in Pennsylvania German cooking. Its appearance under a contributor's name, alongside Mrs. Belford's cauliflower, suggests the community-cookbook genre: such books were compiled by church and charitable committees from members' own kitchen practice, which would explain how the same page can carry two unrelated vegetable dishes in two different voices.