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Greens, Stewed
Take a bunch of fresh greens, wash in several waters, and cut them into quarters. Drain them well, and throw them into plenty of fastboiling water, salted and skimmed, and boil for ten minutes. Take them up, press the water from them, and put them into cold water for half an hour. Drain them, tie them up, cover with stock, and add a bunch of herbs, an onion, one clove, a slice of fat bacon, and a little pepper and salt. Stew very gently till tender. Serve with mutton, lamb, or veal. Probable cost, 2d. each. Sufficient for four persons.
A two-stage method: a hard blanch to take out bitterness and set the colour, then a slow braise in stock. It rewards a proper stock and punishes a long, hard boil at the second stage.
- What "greens" means hereIn a British book of this period, a bunch of greens is loose-leaved cabbage — spring greens, or the outer leaves of a hearting cabbage. Collards, cavolo nero or kale all behave the same way; tender salad greens will collapse to nothing.
- Skimming the boiling waterThe instruction to skim is routine in books of this date: it removes the scum thrown up as the salted water comes to the boil. With well-washed greens there is usually nothing to skim, but salt the water generously — about a tablespoon per 4 quarts.
- The ten-minute blanchTen minutes at a rolling boil is right for thick-stemmed winter greens and far too long for young spring leaves, which need two or three. Judge by the stem: it should bend without snapping.
- Cold water for half an hourThis is a period version of refreshing. Five minutes in iced water does the same job of stopping the cooking and fixing the colour; half an hour in cold tap water mainly leaches flavour.
- Tie them upThe greens are bundled so they can be lifted out of the braising liquid whole and carved into neat portions. Squeeze each quarter dry, shape it, and tie with kitchen string, or press the lot into a small dish if you would rather serve them spooned.
- Bunch of herbsA bouquet garni — parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf, tied. The recipe lists the onion and the single clove separately; the clove is easiest to retrieve if you stick it into the onion.
- Stock and stewingBarely cover with light chicken, veal or vegetable stock; a pint is usually enough for four portions. Keep it at a bare shiver for 20 to 40 minutes depending on the greens. A boil will shred the bundles and turn everything grey-brown.
- Fat baconA thick slice of unsmoked streaky or a piece of pancetta. Its job is to enrich the stock, not to be eaten; lift it out before serving or dice it small and leave it in.
- Yield and costFour portions as a side dish, as the recipe states. The "2d. each" is most likely the price per bunch of greens in Victorian money, and is a reminder that this was a cheap dish given a good deal of labour.
Cassell's places this among the plain vegetable cookery that filled out a middle-class dinner, and the method is a small lesson in Victorian kitchen economy: greens were among the cheapest things on the market, but stewing them in stock with bacon, onion and a bouquet lifts them to the same table as the roast mutton they accompany. The two-stage treatment — blanch hard, refresh, then braise gently — echoes the French professional repertoire that English cookery writers were absorbing through the second half of the nineteenth century, and something like it is still used in restaurant kitchens. The pairing suggested with mutton, lamb and veal reflects the older logic of matching plain white and light meats with a vegetable that has been enriched rather than merely boiled, at a time when boiling cabbage to rags, sometimes with a spoonful of soda to keep it green, was common.