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Cabbage, Stuffed
Choose a good-sized firm young cabbage. Wash it thoroughly, and lay it in water, to which has been added a table-spoonful of vinegar. Let it remain for half an hour, then drain it, cut off the stalk and scoop out the heart, so as to make a space for the stuffing, which may be made of sausage-meat, mixed with chestnuts cut small, or any flavouring that may be preferred. Press the forcemeat into the cabbage, cover it with leaves, which must be well tied on with tape to prevent escape. Place the cabbage in a saucepan with some slices of bacon above and below it, and cover the whole with nicely-flavoured stock. Let it stew gently for half an hour. Take out the cabbage, remove the tape, place it on a hot dish, and strain the gravy over it. Probable cost, 1s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A whole braised stuffed cabbage in the French provincial manner, written for a cook who already knows how to bone out a bird and tie a joint. The recipe's weak point is its timing.
- The half hour is not enoughA ball of raw sausage-meat sealed inside a whole cabbage will not reach 165F/74C in thirty minutes of gentle stewing. Allow 1.5 to 2 hours at a bare simmer, or braise covered at 325F, and check the centre of the stuffing with a probe before serving.
- The vinegar soakA tablespoon of vinegar in the soaking water was most likely there to drive out insects and slugs from field-grown cabbage. Harmless, but unnecessary with modern produce; a rinse and a look between the outer leaves will do.
- Blanch firstThe recipe omits it, but blanching the whole head for 5 to 8 minutes in boiling salted water makes the leaves pliable enough to fold back over the filling without cracking, and cuts down the raw-cabbage sulphur note.
- Tape and tyingCotton tape was a common Victorian kitchen binding, and the recipe calls for it here. Butcher's twine works, but a better method is to line a bowl with a large square of muslin, build the cabbage in it, then gather and tie the cloth into a bundle that can be lifted out whole.
- ChestnutsCassell's assumes fresh chestnuts, peeled and blanched. Vacuum-packed cooked chestnuts are the direct substitute, about 5 oz to a pound of sausage-meat, chopped to pea size.
- Stock and the bacon"Cover the whole" means as much stock as it takes to submerge the head in a snug pan, which will be several pints. The bacon slices above and below are there to keep the leaves from scorching on the pan and to enrich the liquid; use unsmoked streaky, and remove it before straining.
- The gravyThe strained cooking liquid will be thin. Reduce it hard in a wide pan while the cabbage rests, or thicken lightly with a beurre manié; poured over as it stands, it will flood the dish.
- Cost and yield"Probable cost, 1s." is a shilling in Victorian money. Three or four servings is what the recipe itself claims, and is reasonable as a main course.
This is chou farci, a dish of French country cooking that Cassell's presents without naming as such. The whole stuffed head belongs to a family of thrift dishes built on the same logic: a small quantity of pork, extended with bread, grain or chestnuts, wrapped in a vegetable that costs almost nothing and cooked slowly in stock so nothing is lost. Chestnuts with pork is a pairing generally traced to the chestnut-growing regions of central and southern France, where the nut served as a starch staple long before it became a Christmas garnish. Costings are printed alongside the recipes throughout Cassell's, which let a mistress of the house price a dinner before ordering it.