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CABBAGE (a la Bourgeoise)
Clean and boil a whole cabbage for fifteen minutes; lay it in cold water; when cold take it out and squeeze it dry; open the leaves carefully, and between each put a little veal forcemeat; tie all together with packthread, and stew it in as much broth as will cover the cabbage, along with salt, pepper, sweet herbs, a bay leaf, an onion, carrot, parsley, and two or three cloves. When stewed enough press it gently with a clean cloth, remove the pack-thread, cut it in half, and serve with hot brown Spanish sauce poured over it.
A stuffed whole cabbage, boned down to its essentials: blanch, layer forcemeat between the leaves, tie, and braise. The original assumes you know how long to stew it and what Spanish sauce is, so those are the gaps worth filling.
- The hinge: keep the head intactEverything depends on the cabbage holding its shape, so blanch it whole rather than cutting the core out first. Fifteen minutes in boiling water makes the outer leaves pliable enough to fold back one at a time; the cold-water plunge stops the cooking and lets you handle it.
- Choice of cabbageThe recipe does not say which sort. A firm green or Savoy head of about 2 lb suits the method; Savoy's crinkled leaves are tough enough to fold without tearing and hold the forcemeat in place.
- Squeezing dryDo this gently, cupping the head in a towel rather than wringing it. Excess water dilutes the braising liquid and makes the forcemeat slack.
- Veal forcemeatA Victorian veal forcemeat would typically run to ground veal with breadcrumbs, an egg, chopped parsley and lemon zest, salt, pepper and a little mace; something in the region of 12 oz suits a 2 lb head. Ground pork or a veal-pork mix behaves the same way if veal is hard to find.
- PackthreadA stout hemp or flax twine in period; plain cotton kitchen twine does the same job. Cross it over the head in both directions like a parcel, snug but not tight enough to split the leaves.
- Time and heatNo time is given. Reckon on 1 to 1 1/2 hours at a bare simmer, covered, either on the stove or in a 325F oven, until a skewer meets no resistance at the centre and the forcemeat is cooked through to 160F.
- Spanish sauceSauce espagnole: a brown roux let down with brown stock, with tomato and a mirepoix, simmered and strained. A well-reduced brown gravy made from the braising liquid is the practical substitute, and it will taste better than a rushed espagnole.
- Pressing and servingThe cloth-pressing drives out braising liquid so the cut halves do not weep on the plate. Cut in half as directed, or into wedges. This serves four as a main course with the sauce, six as a vegetable course.
A la bourgeoise in nineteenth-century cookbooks signals plain household cooking rather than restaurant work: a dish braised in one pot with the usual root vegetables and herbs, no elaborate garnish. The label is slightly at odds with the method here, since stuffing a cabbage leaf by leaf and trussing it with packthread is patient work, and the finish with sauce espagnole is squarely from the professional side of the kitchen. Stuffed whole cabbage of this kind belongs to a broad European family that includes the French chou farci and its many regional cousins, generally understood as a way of making a small quantity of meat feed a table.