Cabbage Cooked In Milk: or, Just like Great-Grandma used to make

Today, we are going back to my great-grandmother's binder of recipes and making cabbage.

Cabbage Cooked in Milk 2 cups milk 3 tbsp butter 3 tbsp flour 5 to 6 cups shredded cabbage (about half a cabbage-head) 1 cup cream or half-and-half Salt and pepper to taste Nutmeg to taste (if desired)* Heat the milk in a large saucepan. While you're waiting on the milk, melt the butter in a small frying pan. Add the flour and mix thoroughly. Reduce the burner to just enough heat to keep it warm. When the milk comes to a boil, add the cabbage to it. Cook for 2 minutes after it comes back to a simmer. You may have to press the cabbage into the milk until it softens, just like you usually have to gradually push spaghetti into boiling water as it starts to bend. After the cabbage has cooked for 2 minutes, stir in the half-and-half. Before the mixture has time to reheat, quickly mix in the butter and flour. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a brisk boil and cook for 4 minutes, frequently stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot. *Nutmeg isn't in the original ingredients, but it's very good. Source: handwritten manuscript

Apparently she was a teacher. I think her cursive is just as incisive as the corrections she probably put under subpar homework.

Before proceeding, I should note that I only decided to make this recipe after seeing the relatively short cooking time. After all, very few vegetables are at their best after boiling for an hour. 

More so than the graham cracker cake or the brown sugar squares, this seemed like something my great-grandmother would have made. From what I've heard about her, and from seeing her perpetually stern face and rigorously serviceable clothes in photographs, she seems a lot more likely to serve cabbage than cake. 

I've never shredded a cabbage before, and honestly had no idea how. But Martha Stewart showed me how in exactly one minute. It's so rare to find cooking technique videos that aren't bloated out with theme songs or entreaties to "like and subscribe," so I was pleasantly surprised. Of course, I didn't manage to cut my cabbage as finely as the disembodied hands in the video, but I think I did pretty well for a first attempt. 

I didn't see how we could ever submerge this surfeit of cabbage in a pint of milk. But I figured it must have worked at some point, otherwise it wouldn't be written down. I thought that perhaps the cabbage would shrink a lot as it cooked, just like spinach does.

The cabbage barely fit into the pot, which took away a lot of my vegetable optimism. But as I often do when things look amiss on the stove, I followed the recipe exactly as written so I could blame someone else.

There's milk under there somewhere.

After two minutes, our recipe directs us to add the butter, flour, and second allotment of milk. Anyone who made it through the first six weeks of a home economics class would know that milk, butter, and flour are the starting ingredients of a standard-issue white sauce. With that in mind, I initially thought we're supposed to make a gravy which would in turn thicken the milky cabbage. But our recipe directs us, in formidably legible cursive, to "Combine the butter and flour and add with the top milk and seasoning to the cooking cabbage mixture." 

I was afraid that the butter and flour would harden into dumpling-clods as soon as it landed in the hot milk. But I can't argue with someone who (based on the recipe we're looking at) could competently use a fountain pen. And so, I dumped in the half-and-half (which today is filling in for the top milk). Before the pot of cabbage had a chance to reheat, I quickly added the butter and flour and stirred really hard to make them quickly mix into everything else. I didn't think it would work, but was happily surprised.

At this point, we had only one sentence left in the recipe: "Continue cooking the entire mixture rapidly for 4 minutes." When I turned off the burner, the cabbage was blessedly still green instead of a colorless overcooked slime. Unfortunately, it hung off the ladle like limp green tentacles.

Boy does this ever look like someone saying "Eat your vegetables."

The cabbage looked a lot better at the table than when I fished it out of the pot. Just for a bit of extra flair (and because we had the partial remains of a loaf on the countertop), I popped a slice of French bread into the toaster and then propped it up in the bowl.

 To my surprise, I liked this a lot. I had initially suspected that I was making a perfunctory recipe for joyless vegetables, but it was oddly satisfying on a cold night. It also was unexpectedly filling, which I imagine was ideal when my great-grandmother was feeding the kids. The short cooking time meant that the cabbage was still ever-so-slightly crisp. The cabbage became slightly sweet as it cooked, which I liked.

In full disclosure, I should note that some of the milk hardened onto the bottom of the pot (as often happens when putting milk on the stove). I had to soak it overnight in bleach-water before the cooked-on milk would lift away. Soaking a dirty pot overnight isn't laborious, but I do think it's worth keeping in mind. 

In closing, this was unexpectedly good and also really quick to make. If you are actually organized in the kitchen, you can have it ready in about half an hour. So, and I didn't think I would say this, I have already made this again.

Note: "Top milk" refers the cream that used to separate out of milk and rise to the top of the bottle. Because milk is now homogenized, that no longer happens. Back then, you had to shake the milk bottle to mix it before pouring, like you often do with salad dressings today. Many people would instead pour out the cream, then pour themselves a glass of milk, and then return the cream to the bottle afterward.↪