cabbage salad

The February cookbook is a book called Aggieville Appetites.  The cookbook review can be found here.  The March recipe from from the Aggieville cookbook is a  cabbage salad.  It is sliced cabbage, red onion and green pepper layered with sugar and with a cooked dressing poured over.  The dressing is oil and vinegar with sugar, salt, celery seeds and dry mustard.  It is purported to keep for three weeks in the refrigerator.  It makes a large salad. 

Cabbage Salad

1 large head  cabbage, thinly sliced
1 red onion, thinly sliced
1 green pepper, thinly sliced
1 cup sugar

layer the vegetables and sugar using 1/4 of the cabbage, onion  and green pepper with 1/4 cup sugar for each layer.

Dressing

2 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp dry mustard
1 tsp celery seed
1 tsp salt
1 cup vinegar
3/4 cup canola oil

Combine dressing ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Allow to cool slightly and then pour over vegetable layers.  Stir occasionally.  Keeps three weeks if refrigerated.

When I made this  recipe I used white vinegar.  I am wondering how it would be with a cider vinegar or a seasoned rice vinegar.  I enjoyed the salad.  There was just a little hotness to it, which I assumed came from the red onion.  It will be interesting to see if over the course of its life in my refrigerator  that onion flavor intensifies or mellows.  Perhaps it will get more pickled.   If it intensifies I might  consider using a sweet onion or cooking it a bit.  A possible alternative, if using a white onion instead of red, might be to add a little shredded carrot to replace the missing color.