No. 2706

Cabbage, Peasant Style

Choux a la Paysanne

Parboil half a cabbage for fifteen minutes, remove the core, drain and braise; when well done drain once more and suppress the hard parts; mash the remainder with a spoon, seasoning with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Have a linen bag two and a quarter inches in diameter; fill it with the seasoned cabbage and tie it firmly, pressing it down tight; lay this under a weight to get thoroughly cold, then cut it into even slices remove the pieces of linen and dip each slice in beaten egg and then in bread-crumbs; fry in clarified butter and dress in a circle. To fill the center chop up finely the other half of the cabbage, after blanching it for ten minutes and draining very dry; put it into a saucepan with fresh butter, and fry colorless; season, moisten with broth (No. 194a), and let simmer until thoroughly done and the liquid reduced, then drain off the fat and thicken with a little veloute sauce (No. 415) and fresh butter; lay this inside the circle as described above.

← No. 2705 Cabbage in Ballotines—Stuffed Beans, Peas & Lentils No. 2707 Red Cabbage a la Montargis →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer builds a dish out of one cabbage in two forms: half of it pressed into a chilled cylinder, sliced, breaded and fried, the other half stewed soft to fill the middle. The hinge is the pressing — the cabbage must be squeezed genuinely dry and chilled hard, or the slices collapse in the pan.

The linen bagA tube of cloth roughly 2¼ inches across, filled and tied so the cabbage compacts into a salami shape. A double layer of cheesecloth rolled tight, or a sheet of plastic wrap rolled into a cylinder and twisted at both ends, does the same job. Weight it in the refrigerator at least four hours, overnight is better.
Drain, then drain againCabbage is mostly water and the recipe has you drain the pressed half twice, after parboiling and again after braising. Press the braised cabbage in a sieve with the back of a ladle before it goes into the cloth; any liquid left behind will keep the cylinder from setting.
"Braise" hereThe recipe does not say how. A covered pan with butter and a little broth over low heat until the cabbage is thoroughly tender, roughly 30 to 45 minutes depending on the head, will do. "Suppress the hard parts" means pull out the thick rib sections that never soften.
Broth No. 194a and velouté No. 415Cross-references to elsewhere in the book. The first is a plain white stock; the second is a white stock thickened with a blond roux. A few spoonfuls of any good chicken velouté, or reduced stock finished with butter, will bind the stewed filling.
Clarified butterUsed because whole butter's milk solids burn before breaded slices brown. Clarify your own or use ghee; the slices need a shallow bath at about 350°F and two to three minutes a side.
Slice thicknessCut the chilled cylinder into rounds about ½ inch thick. Thinner rounds fall apart when egged and crumbed; thicker ones stay cold in the middle.
NutmegNot a garnish note — nutmeg with cabbage and butter is standard nineteenth-century French seasoning and the dish tastes flat without it. Grate it fresh, a modest amount.
YieldOne medium head gives roughly six to eight fried rounds with filling for the center: a vegetable course for four.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer ran the kitchens at Delmonico's in New York and published The Epicurean in 1894 as a complete record of that repertoire, some 3,500 numbered receipts cross-referenced to one another like a technical manual. À la paysanne means peasant style, attached here to a preparation that requires parboiling, braising, molding, chilling, slicing, breading and a velouté-bound garnish. Cabbage was a cheap vegetable and the great restaurant kitchens dressed it up — the same impulse that produced the stuffed cabbage ballotines in the entry immediately before this one. The technique of pressing a cooked purée into a cloth, chilling it firm and slicing it for frying appears elsewhere in French cookery; it is the same logic that gives us croquettes.