Boiled Cabbage

Pick off the outer green leaves, quarter, examine carefully to be sure there are no insects in it, and Jay for an hour in cold water. Then put into a pot with plenty of boiling water, and cook fifteen minutes. Throw away the water, and fill up the pot from the boiling tea-kettle. Cook until tender all through. Three-quarters of an hour will do for a good-sized cabbage when young. Late in the season you must be guided by the tenderness of the stalk. Drain well, chop, and stir in a tablespoonful of butter, pepper, and salt. Serve very hot. If you boil corned beef or pork to eat with cabbage, let the second water be taken from the pot in which this is cooking. It will flavor it nicely.

Always boil cabbage in two waters.

Bacon And Cabbage

This, I need hardly say, is a favorite country dish at the South. The old-fashioned way of preparing it was to boil meat and cabbage together, and serve, reeking with fat, the cabbage in quarters, soaking yet more of the essence from the ham or middling about which it lay. In this shape it justly earned a reputation for grossness and indigestibility that banished it, in time, from many tables.

Yet it is a savory and not unwholesome article of food in winter, if the cabbage be boiled in two waters, the second being the "pot liquor" from the boiling meat. Drain thoroughly in a cullender, pressing out every drop of water that will flow, without breaking the tender leaves; and when the meat is dished, lay the cabbage neatly about it, and upon each quarter a slice of hard-boiled egg.

When you eat, season with pepper, salt, and vinegar.

Stuffed Cabbage

Choose for this purpose a large, firm cabbage. Take off the outer leaves, and lay in boiling water ten minutes, then in very cold. Do this several hours before you are ready to stuff it. When perfectly cold, bind a broad tape about it, or a strip of muslin, that it may not fall apart when the stalk is taken out. Remove this with a thin sharp knife, leaving a hole about as deep as your middle-finger. Without widening the mouth of the aperture, excavate the centre until you have room for four or five tablespoonfuls of the force-meat - more, if the head be large. Chop the bits you take out very small; mix with some cold boiled pork or ham, or cooked sausage-meat, a. very little onion, pepper, salt, a pinch of thyme, and some breadcrumbs. Fill the cavity with this, bind a wide strip of muslin over the hole in the top, and lay the cabbage in a large saucepan with a pint of "pot-liquor" from boiled beef or ham. stew gently until very tender. Take out the cabbage, unbind carefully, and lay in a dish. Keep hot while you add to the gravy, when you have strained it pepper a piece of butter rolled in flour, and two or three tablespoonfuls rich milk or cream. Boil up, and pour over the cabbage.