The Cabbage Dinner

The Cabbage Dinner is Phil Burbank’s name for one of the rare occasions when a gathering at the Burbank home found an easy subject and lively conversation. George Burbank later recalled it when advising Rose Gordon Burbank to avoid a large dinner for the Governor: at a table meant for twenty-four, a crowd would not necessarily make conversation easier.

The occasion

The dinner was interrupted by an unexpected parish call from the Episcopal minister. He introduced cabbage as a subject, perhaps because his wife, who was of German extraction, was fond of it. The guests took it up with striking enthusiasm: the women expressed affection or dislike for the vegetable, while the men recalled their mothers’ sauerkraut, country gardens, and the past.

The conversation became practical as well as nostalgic. Guests exchanged recipes for preparing, preserving, and improving cabbage, and the women promised with a nod to try one another’s recipes. Phil’s name for the occasion turned on this contrast with the family’s more difficult parties: cabbage gave the company something they could discuss together.

A rare success among the Burbank parties

The family’s gatherings could falter once ordinary topics ran out. Weather might prompt an intense round of talk about temperature, rain, snow, humidity, and wind, followed by silence until dinner. Guests at Burbank parties were often unsure how to talk or behave, and afterward could leave embarrassed by their stilted performance. Against that wider pattern, the Cabbage Dinner stood out as a party that briefly overcame the strain of social conversation.

Phil grouped it with the Mud-Hole Dinner and the Grizzly Bear Dinner, but remembered it as one of the last parties the elder Burbanks attempted. The name preserves both its humble topic and its unusual liveliness: an ordinary vegetable gave a gathering a shared subject when more formal occasions had not.

George’s later recollection

When Rose Gordon Burbank was preparing to host the Governor, she hoped that inviting many people would make the occasion safer and more dazzling. George Burbank recalled the Cabbage Dinner as a reason not to rely on numbers. He proposed that the dinner include only Rose, himself, and Phil Burbank, whom he considered an excellent talker, with Rose playing the piano afterward.

George also remembered his mother’s reaction to the Cabbage Dinner: her face had gone pale, and it took years before she could laugh about it. The recollection therefore carried more than a convenient example of successful conversation. It joined the family’s social unease to George’s own reluctance about the Governor’s visit, and helped him explain why a smaller gathering might be easier to manage.