RED CABBAGE PICKLED

Purple cabbage
Salt
Pickle for red beets (see recipe)

Get a fine purple cabbage, take off the outside leaves, quarter it, take out the stalk [core], shred the leaves into a colander, sprinkle them with salt, let them remain till the morrow, drain them dry, put them into a jar, and cover them with the pickle for beet roots.

From The Cook's Oracle by William Kitchiner, MD, New York, 1829

Comment: This recipe looks like a triumph of brevity, but Dr. Kitchiner cheats just a bit since the key to the whole thing is "the pickle for beet roots" which is not described. Rather than make our readers go off and scrounge the Internets for this recipe we include it here:

"[Add] to a quart of vinegar an ounce of ground black pepper, half an ounce of ginger pounded, same of salt, and of horseradish cut in thin slices; and you may warm it, if you like, with a few capsicums, or a little Cayenne; put these ingredients into a jar; stop it close, and let them steep three days on a trivet by the side of the fire; then, when cold, pour the clear liquor on the beet-root, which have previously arranged in a jar."

It is in fact just possible that Dr. Kitchiner had the shortcomings of the Red Cabbage recipe brought to his attention by his own irate readers, since it is not included in the main text of the book but rather in an Appendix. Never underestimate the importance of consumer protest.

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