Skip to main content
Main

Cabbages

Cabbage boiled after soaking in salt water, served plain or with butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Cabbages

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Strip the outer leaves from the cabbage and cut it into quarters without separating.

  2. Soak the cabbage in a mixture of salt and water for 30 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.

  2. Add the cabbage to the boiling water with baking soda and a little salt.

  3. Once the cabbage sinks to the bottom, drain it immediately.

  4. Serve plain or pressed, with a butter sauce if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the main body of the dish, softening as it cooks into a tender, mild vegetable.
Baking soda
Raises the water's pH, which helps cabbage soften and keep a bright color while boiling.

The step that matters

Draining once the cabbage sinks. Cabbage keeps cooking from residual heat after it sinks, so draining immediately prevents it from becoming overcooked, mushy, and sulfurous in smell.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More boiled cabbage recipes

and Cauliflower 3 See all 153 →

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes