Cabbage Soup
INGREDIENTS for soup for 8 persons.-1 large cabbage, 3 carrots, 2 onions, 4 or 5 slices of lean bacon, salt and pepper to taste, 2 quarts of medium stock. AVERAGE COST, 1s. per quart.
Scald the cabbage, cut it up and drain it. Line the stewpan with the bacon, put in the cabbage, carrots, and onions; CABINET PUDDING. moisten with skimmings from the stock, and simmer very gently, till the cabbage is tender; add the stock, stew softly for half an hour, and carefully skim off every particle of fat. Season and serve.
TIME -1 1/2 hour.
SEASONABLE in winter.
Cabinet, or Boiled Bread-and-
A plain winter vegetable soup that depends entirely on the quality of the stock and on cooking the cabbage slowly in fat before any liquid goes in. Two stray fragments of typesetting — "CABINET PUDDING." mid-paragraph and the trailing "Cabinet, or Boiled Bread-and-" — are running heads and a catchword from the neighbouring entry, not part of the method.
- Sweat the cabbage firstThe hinge is the slow stage in fat before the stock is added: cabbage, carrot and onion cooked gently over the bacon, moistened with skimmings, until the cabbage is genuinely tender and sweet. Rushing straight to the broth gives a thin, sulphurous soup.
- Medium stockBeeton's "medium" stock is a light beef or veal broth, weaker than her rich strong stock. Two quarts is 8 cups; a mild unsalted beef or chicken stock stands in well.
- Skimmings from the stockThe fat lifted off cooled stock, used here as the cooking fat. Substitute a couple of tablespoons of bacon fat, butter or oil.
- Line the stewpan with baconLay the bacon slices flat across the base so the vegetables cook on top of them rather than on bare metal. Streaky or unsmoked belly bacon suits it better than modern thin-sliced back rashers.
- Scalding the cabbagePour boiling water over the cut cabbage, or drop it briefly into boiling water, then drain thoroughly. It softens the leaves and takes the raw edge off; drain well or the fat will spit.
- Cutting the vegetablesNo sizes are given. Shred the cabbage, and slice carrots and onions thinly so they finish within the same 30 minutes as the final stewing.
- TimingThe stated hour is realistic only if the initial sweating runs 25-30 minutes and the stock stage a further half hour. Cabbage held much longer turns grey and flat.
- Skimming and seasoningSkim the fat off at the end as directed, then season — bacon and stock both carry salt, so taste before adding any. Yields eight modest first-course servings, closer to four as a main.
Cabbage soup with bacon is a household economy dish common to most of northern Europe, and Beeton's version is recognisably in the French line of the potée or soupe aux choux, where a little salted pork carries the flavour of a great deal of cheap winter vegetable. The "seasonable in winter" note is doing real work in a Victorian book: hard white and Savoy cabbages stored or stood in the ground through the cold months, when little else green was to be had, and the recipe's place in a chapter of soups built on graded stocks reflects Beeton's own instruction to keep a stockpot going and to rank its output by grade. The costing of a shilling a quart is Beeton's characteristic touch — her Book of Household Management was aimed at mistresses of modest households who needed to know what a dish would cost before they ordered the ingredients.