1 head of cabbage
Stuffing or dressing
Butter

Get a fine head of cabbage, not too large; pour boiling water on [it], and cover it till you can turn the leaves back, which you must do carefully; take some of those in the middle of the head off, chop them fine, and mix them with rich forcemeat; put this in, and replace the leaves to confine the stuffing; tie it in a cloth, and boil it. Serve it up whole, with a little melted butter in the dish.

From The Virginia Housewife, or Methodical Cook, by Mary Randolph, 1824.

Comment: It is a testimony to the scientific notion of “convergent evolution” that we find nearly identical recipes to this one in the ethnic traditions of nearly every part of the world in which cabbage is grown. The only variants are the specifics of the stuffing–and recipes can be found for forcemeats based on everything from ham to veal to rabbit and beyond–and what if any sauce or liquid is used to surround the dish at serving. The act of wrapping this item in a cloth and boiling it is what conveys the status of “pudding,” a word whose meaning has clearly evolved from that time to this.

          

1 head cabbage
Vinegar
Salt
Pepper
Whole mustard seeds, white
Pickled eggs, cut in circles

Select firm, fragile heads of cabbage (no other sort being fit for slaugh); having stripped off the outer leaves, cleave the top part of the head into four equal parts, leaving the lower part whole, so that they may not be separated till shaved or cut fine from the stalk. Take a very sharp knife, shave off the cabbage roundwise, cutting it very smoothly and evenly, and at no rate more than a quarter of an inch in width. Put the shavings or slaugh in a deep china dish, pile it high, and make it smooth; mix with enough good vinegar to nearly fill the dish, a sufficient quantity of salt and pepper to season the slaugh; add a spoonful of whole white mustard seeds, and pour it over the slaugh, garnish it round on the edge of the dish with pickled eggs, cut in ringlets. Never put butter on cabbage that is to be eaten cold, as it is by no means pleasant to the taste or sight.

From The Kentucky Housewife by Lettice Bryan, 1839

Comments: While the spelling of both the first and the last names of “coleslaw” may have changed a good bit over time, the recipe itself is still the version commonly found in many parts of the country.  It should be noted that the dressing–vinegar, mustard seed, etc–is to be mixed separately and then poured over the cabbage all at once. It is unclear what she means by a “fragile” cabbage–it could be the one that seems most likely to go bad or one which has not hardened excessively in storage. With modern shipping making perfectly fresh ones available year round the matter is of historical interest only.

Cabbage was one of the few vegetables which could be stored over winter without canning, pickling or other preservative procedures. Simply burying the heads in a barrel packed with sand and stored in the basement or cold cellar kept them edible until spring plantings started to come in. As a bonus it is unusually high in Vitamin C and other nutrients, so probably kept some of our ancestors protected against scurvy over the winter.

          

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. 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.

“Capsicums” is a fairly generic term for hot red peppers, of which Cayenne is an example. The mention of “warming the jug on a trivet by the fire” indicates that this dates from the time when all cooking was done on a hearth or large fireplace rather than a stove or oven.  If you lack a hearth, or are preparing this at a time of year when use of the fireplace is not desired, you are on your own. Either leave it at room temperature or heat it briefly and mildly on the stove several times over the course of the three day period. Strain before putting over the cabbage.