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Stuffed Cabbage
I cabbage
1 cup bread-crums
Butter or butter substitute
3 eggs
Parsley
I chopped onion
Spices
Place a thin piece of cheese-cloth in the bottom of a bowl and lay the large cabbage leaves in it. Chop the middle of the cabbage fine and fry it in butter or butter substitute until it is yellow. Remove it from the fire, add a little chopped parsley, spices, bread-crums, eggs and onion. Place this mixture inside the large cabbage leaves, and tie up the cabbage by tying together the four corners of the cloth.
Place in a pan of boiling salted water and boil until the cabbage leaves are tender (about thirty-five minutes). When done, remove from the cloth, pour a little melted butter or butter substitute over it, and some fine bread-crums, and bake for five minutes.
Serve with a tomato sauce.
A classic chou farci reassembled in a cloth rather than a mold. The method is sound; the original simply assumes knowledge that a modern cook may not have.
- The hinge: soften the outer leaves firstThe recipe says to lay the large leaves in the cloth-lined bowl but never says to blanch them. Raw leaves crack and will not curve around the filling — dip them in boiling water for two or three minutes until pliable, then drain and pat dry before lining the bowl.
- Line the bowl generouslyOverlap the leaves so they hang well over the rim, with the thick central ribs shaved flat. The cloth carries the weight, but the leaves have to close over the filling completely or it leaches out into the cooking water.
- "Spices"Left entirely open, as period books often do. For a French cabbage farce this means salt, black pepper and nutmeg, with thyme or a little clove if you like. Season the filling assertively — boiling in salted water pulls flavour out.
- Butter substituteThe repeated "butter or butter substitute" points to a period when margarine and other substitutes were being promoted as a household economy. Nothing about the dish requires them; use butter.
- Three eggs to one cup of crumbsThat is a wet, custardy bind by modern standards, and it is what holds the sliced ball together. Use dry crumbs rather than fresh, and let the fried cabbage cool before the eggs go in or they will scramble.
- Boiling timeThirty-five minutes is right for the leaves, but the egg-bound centre of a large ball needs the heat to reach it. A steady simmer is kinder to the parcel than the rolling boil the recipe calls for, and a large cabbage will want longer than the stated thirty-five minutes.
- The five-minute bakeNo temperature is given. This is a browning step only, so a hot oven — 425F — for five to eight minutes, until the buttered crumbs colour. Unmold onto an ovenproof dish first; the cloth must come off before it goes in.
- YieldOne medium cabbage should serve about four as a main course with the tomato sauce, or six as a vegetable course. Cut it into wedges at the table like a cake.
Stuffed cabbage in this form is chou farci, a dish of French country cooking in which the whole head is hollowed, refilled and poached in a cloth so it comes to the table looking untouched — a bit of thrift dressed up as showmanship, since the filling was often a way of stretching a small quantity of meat or, as here, none at all. Butterick was a pattern company that moved into domestic advice through its magazines. The repeated "butter or butter substitute" suggests a period of fat economy, when margarine and vegetable shortenings were promoted to households, and the meatless filling would have read as sensible rather than austere.