Home › A Calendar of Dinners › September 24
September 24
Menu: Macaroni Soup; Fried Scallops; Tournedos, a la Bordelaise; Mashed Potatoes; Baked Tomatoes; Cold Slaw; Queen Mab Pudding; Coffee; to Cold Slaw-Cut 2 cabbages very fine and put it in salad bowl. Boil 2 tablespoons vinegar. Beat up 2 eggs, add ½ cup sour cream, 2 tablespoons Crisco and add them boiled vinegar. Stir over fire till boiling, add 1 teaspoon salt and 14 teaspoon pepper, pour over cabbage, and it is ready to serve when very cold.
A boiled dressing for cabbage, of the sort that preceded mayonnaise in American kitchens. The page comes from a dated dinner calendar, and the type has suffered: read "14 teaspoon" as ¼ teaspoon and "add them boiled vinegar" as "add the boiled vinegar."
- The hinge: keep the eggs movingThis is a stirred custard with vinegar in it, and it will scramble if left alone. Whisk the hot vinegar into the beaten eggs and cream in a thin stream first, then return everything to low heat and stir constantly until it just thickens and coats the spoon. "Till boiling" is more heat than the eggs want; pull it at the first sign of steam and thickening.
- Two cabbages is a partyTwo full heads shredded fine is a large amount, on the order of 3 to 5 lb depending on the heads, enough for a dozen or more servings. For four people use one small head, about 1½ lb, and halve the dressing.
- The vinegar looks shortTwo tablespoons of vinegar against ½ cup sour cream and two eggs gives a very mild dressing, and it is little liquid to dress two whole cabbages. Boiled dressings of the period often call for more vinegar than this. The figure as printed may be a compositor's error; taste and add more vinegar at the end rather than guessing at the start.
- CriscoStraight substitution with any neutral solid shortening, or with butter if you want more flavor. Its job here is body and richness, not flavor, so it goes in with the cream before heating.
- Sour cream then and nowIn 1913 sour cream generally meant cream that had soured naturally, thinner and sharper than today's cultured product. Modern full-fat sour cream works; if it seems stiff, loosen it with a spoonful of milk before whisking in the eggs.
- "Ready to serve when very cold"Dress the cabbage while the dressing is still warm, then chill at least an hour. The cabbage softens and gives up water as it sits, so drain or re-toss before serving.
- Shredding"Very fine" means fine — quarter the heads, cut out the core, and slice thin across the grain with a knife or on a mandoline. Coarse chunks will not take up a dressing this thin.
The Story of Crisco (1913) was written by Marion Harris Neil for Procter & Gamble to teach cooks what to do with a wholly new product: hydrogenated cottonseed oil, sold from 1911 as a shelf-stable stand-in for lard and butter. The book is generally associated with a "Calendar of Dinners" framework assigning a menu to every day of the year — it was later retitled A Calendar of Dinners — which is why this dressing carries the date September 25 and shares a page with an entry on coffee. The dish itself is older than the fat: "cold slaw" is a folk-English reworking of the Dutch koolsalade or koolsla, cabbage salad, which reached American tables through Dutch settlement and had been printed in English-language cookbooks since at least the early nineteenth century. Once the name was heard as "cold slaw," a "hot slaw" duly appeared alongside it. The cooked egg-and-vinegar dressing is often said to have been the usual treatment before commercial mayonnaise became a pantry staple in the 1920s.