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Boiled Bacon and Cabbage
This dish may also be prepared with broad beans, in lieu of the cabbage; in either case the process is the same, and is as follows: Cut a good cabbage into quarters and remove some of the thick part of them, as much as can be done without disturbing the leaves. Soak in a pan of cold water until it is wanted. Put the cabbage into a large saucepan containing some water boiling, with a teaspoonful of salt and a pinch of bicarbonate of soda, and cook for half an hour. Take some good bacon, cleaning off the smoky parts, place in cold water and then boil for half an hour separately. Drain both the cabbage and the bacon and put them together in one pot, covering them with boiling water which has not been used before, and let them cook slowly for another half-hour. Remove the cabbage as whole as possible, drain on a colander, and, after slicing the bacon, serve it on the cabbage in a dish with a drainer.
An English boiled dinner as served in an American hotel, written for a joint of bacon rather than for rashers. Two details need translating before it works on a modern stove: what "bacon" means here, and how long cabbage can stand in boiling water.
- The bacon is a joint, not stripsOscar means a cured pork cut, not rashers — what a British butcher calls gammon, collar or forehock, and what an American market sells as slab bacon or a smoked picnic shoulder. The recipe gives no weight. Sliced breakfast bacon will disintegrate. "Cleaning off the smoky parts" most likely means scraping the blackened outer rind of a hard-smoked piece.
- Cook the meat by weightHalf an hour is only the first stage; the joint gets another half-hour with the cabbage. Reckon on roughly 20 minutes per pound plus 20 minutes overall, and check that the centre reaches 145°F before slicing. A larger joint needs proportionally longer, which is why the cabbage should go in near the end rather than at the start.
- Soak salty cures firstPeriod bacon was salted far harder than most cures sold today. If your joint is heavily salted, cover it with cold water for a few hours and discard that water — the initial cold-water start in the recipe does the same job at lower efficiency. Do not add salt to the water the two cook in together.
- Skip the bicarbonate of sodaSoda turns up in period recipes to keep boiled greens bright: alkaline water helps the cabbage hold its green colour. It also turns cabbage slippery, gives it a soapy note, and destroys much of the vitamin C. Leave it out.
- An hour and a half of cabbage is too muchAn hour of cabbage is too much -- the recipe gives it half an hour alone and another half-hour with the bacon. Quartered cabbage is tender in eight to twelve minutes. Add it to the bacon pot for the last fifteen minutes of cooking rather than boiling it separately for thirty first. The cold-water soak beforehand is still worth doing: it crisps the leaves and floats out grit.
- "Water which has not been used before"Fresh boiling water for the combined pot, not the bacon liquor. The likeliest reason is to keep excess salt out. If your bacon is mildly cured, the cooking liquor is good stock and worth keeping for soup.
- The broad bean versionFresh broad beans (fava) want five to seven minutes, not thirty; older beans benefit from slipping off the grey skins after cooking. Dried favas are a different proposition and need soaking overnight.
- ServingA "dish with a drainer" is a platter with a perforated insert that lets liquid collect underneath — a warmed platter tilted slightly, or a rack set in a shallow dish, does the same. Parsley sauce or mustard is a traditional accompaniment.
Boiled bacon and cabbage is a plain English and Irish farmhouse dinner: a cured joint kept through the year, boiled with whatever green was in the garden, the liquor saved for soup. Its presence in Oscar Tschirky's book is a reminder that the Waldorf's kitchen was not exclusively French. Oscar came to New York from Switzerland in the 1880s and compiled his 1896 volume as a working reference of everything a large hotel might be asked to send up. The broad bean alternative points the same direction — beans and bacon is a long-standing pairing in English cookery, and the recipe treats the two greens as simple substitutes.