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Cabbage Soup
Take a large cabbage, three carrots, two onions, five slices lean bacon, salt and pepper to taste, two quarts of medium stock. Scald the cabbage, cut it up and drain it. Line the stewpan with the bacon, put in the cabbage, carrots and onions. Moisten with skimmings from the stock. Simmer very gently until the cabbage is tender. Add the stock, stew softly for half an hour, and carefully skim off every particle of fat. Season and serve. It takes one hour and a half to cook. This is a splendid soup for cool weather, and this quantity is sufficient for eight persons.
A plain braise-then-simmer soup that depends almost entirely on the long, gentle first stage. The instructions are complete as written; only a few terms need translating.
- The hinge: sweat, don't boilThe cabbage, carrots and onions cook first in fat alone, barely moistened, until the cabbage is genuinely tender and sweet. Rushing this stage or adding the stock early gives you boiled cabbage water instead of the mellower base the recipe is after.
- "Medium stock"Nineteenth-century cookbooks such as Mrs Beeton's gave separate recipes for a rich strong stock (for sauces and clear soups) and a plainer medium stock of beef or veal for everyday soups. Two quarts of a decent unsalted beef or chicken stock is a reasonable equivalent; if you are using commercial stock, dilute it slightly and hold back the salt until the end.
- "Skimmings from the stock"The fat lifted off the top of a cooled stockpot. Two or three tablespoons of rendered beef fat, bacon fat or butter does the same job.
- Lining the pan with baconFive slices of lean bacon laid flat on the bottom of the pot render slowly and keep the vegetables from catching. Use a heavy pan and low heat; if the bacon browns hard before the cabbage softens, the soup will taste scorched.
- Cabbage sizeRead "a large cabbage" as roughly 2 to 2 1/2 lb, trimmed. Scalding means a brief plunge in boiling water; with modern green or Savoy cabbage it is optional, though it does soften the leaves for cutting.
- Skimming the fatThe direction to remove "every particle of fat" is not fussiness. With bacon plus stock skimmings, the finished soup will carry a heavy slick. Easiest route is to chill it and lift the set fat off, then reheat.
- Timing and yieldAn hour and a half in total, with half an hour of that after the stock goes in, so most of the time is the gentle first stage. The recipe gives the quantity as sufficient for eight persons.
Cabbage and bacon simmered in broth is a longstanding European soup, a relative of French soupe aux choux and pot\ccookbooks of this period as a frugal cool-weather dish built on the two things a household always had: a stockpot and a cellar of root vegetables. The technique here, lining the pan with bacon and sweating the vegetables in fat before any liquid is added, is straight out of the classical French repertoire that filtered into English-language household manuals through the nineteenth century.