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CABBAGE, BOILED (another way)
Put into a saucepan a piece of rind of bacon, a little lard, salt, and pepper, and when the cabbage has been well washed and dried, put it into the saucepan over the fire until the fat has become absorbed. Then cover the cabbage with plain stock, or part stock and water, and let it gradually boil till tender. Drain off all the liquor, and put the cabbage back into the empty saucepan, let it thoroughly heat up again with a small piece of butter or lard, and serve very hot.
Despite the title this is not really boiled cabbage but a braise: the cabbage is first sweated in fat, then stewed in stock and finished dry in the pan. The sequence matters more than any timing.
- Rind of baconA strip of the tough skin cut from a slab of bacon, kept for flavouring pots of greens and beans. A 2-inch piece of pancetta, a bacon end, or a ham hock skin does the same job; it is aromatic, not an ingredient you serve.
- QuantityCassell's gives none. One firm green or Savoy cabbage of about 2 lb, quartered and cored, serves four to six, and wants roughly a pint of stock to cover it once it has collapsed in the fat.
- "Until the fat has become absorbed"This means sweating the cabbage in the seasoned fat over moderate heat until it wilts and takes on gloss, five to ten minutes. It is not browning, and the pan should not be hot enough to scorch the leaves.
- Gradual boilingRead "gradually boil" as a gentle simmer rather than a rolling boil; the recipe does not say whether to cover the pan. Allow roughly 20 to 25 minutes for wedges, 10 to 12 for shredded cabbage. Hard boiling breaks up the leaves and drives the sulphurous compounds into the kitchen rather than the pot.
- Save the liquorThe instruction to drain off all the liquor is sound for texture but wasteful; the cabbage-and-bacon stock is good soup base. Reserve it rather than tipping it away.
- The final reheatThis is the hinge of the dish. Returning the drained cabbage to the dry pan with butter evaporates residual water and concentrates flavour, which is why the result tastes nothing like plain boiled cabbage. Give it two or three minutes, turning, until it stops steaming.
- SaltSalt is added at the start, before any stock. If the stock is commercial and the bacon rind salty, hold the salt back until the cabbage is drained and taste then.
Cabbage cooked in fat with a scrap of bacon rind and moistened with stock is the everyday French treatment, chou braisé, and Cassell's carries it as "another way", a second entry under the same alphabetical heading; the English default in the 1870s was a large pot of fast-boiling salted water, sometimes with soda added to hold the colour. That habit is why boiled cabbage acquired its reputation; the vegetable's sulphur compounds are volatile and prolonged boiling drives them out while the leaves turn grey and sodden. Keeping a rind of bacon by for the vegetable pot was thrift rather than refinement, common to French, German and American Southern cooking alike, cabbage being a test case for whether a cook understood that vegetables can be cooked in flavour instead of water.