No. 708

Puree of Milan or Savoy Cabbage

Puree de Choux de Milan ou de Savoie

Divide a cabbage into four parts; remove the core, then blanch, drain, refresh and shred it finely; fry two tablespoonfuls of chopped shallot in four ounces of butter, add four ounces of minced mushrooms, a tablespoonful of chopped parsley, and some sait to season, then the cabbage, one quart of broth (No. 194a), and two ounces of butter; let simmer until done to perfection, and when the liquid is entirely reduced, add two pints of bechamel sauce (No. 409), press through a sieve, and keep it very warm until serving; then add two ounces of fresh butter.

← No. 707 Puree of Brussels Sprouts Garnishings No. 709 Puree of Carrots →

For the Modern Kitchen

A Delmonico's vegetable purée built on the classic French model: cabbage stewed to nothing in stock, then bound with béchamel and finished with raw butter. Two things decide whether it works — the blanching, and how far you reduce.

Reduce the liquid completelyThe quart of broth must cook away entirely before the béchamel goes in, or the purée will be soup. Keep the pan uncovered over a low flame and let it go dry; this is the hinge of the recipe.
Blanch, drain, refreshBoil the quartered cabbage in salted water 5-8 minutes, drain it, then plunge it into cold water and drain again. This strips the sulphurous edge that long stewing would otherwise concentrate.
The cabbageMilan and Savoy are effectively the same thing — the crinkled, loose-headed green cabbage. One head of about 2 lb suits these quantities. Smooth white cabbage will work but tastes flatter.
Broth No. 194 aRanhofer's cross-reference is to one of his white broths; any light, lightly salted stock will serve. Avoid a heavily reduced or salty commercial base, since the liquid cooks down to nothing and would leave the salt behind.
Béchamel No. 409A butter-and-flour roux moistened with milk, in the usual manner of the book's white sauces. Two pints (4 cups) is a large amount of sauce for one cabbage — start with half, sieve, and add more only until the purée just holds a soft mound.
ButterEight ounces in total, two sticks: four to fry the shallot, two with the cabbage, two raw at the end. The final two ounces should go in off the heat, whisked in just before serving, and must not boil.
SievingA food mill, or a short spell in a food processor followed by a pass through a fine sieve, saves a good deal of work. Do not skip the sieve — it is what catches the coarse cabbage ribs and makes the difference between a purée and a mash.
Holding and yield"Keep it very warm" means a covered bowl over hot, not boiling, water; direct heat will catch the flour. Expect roughly 6 to 8 servings as a garnish for roast or braised meat, which is how it appears here.
"Sait"A typesetter's slip for salt.

A Little History

This comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the vast professional record of his years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and its placement under "Garnishings" rather than "Vegetables" tells you how it was meant to be used: not as a dish in itself but as a bed or border for a roast, a set of cutlets, or a game bird. Purées of this kind — vegetable cooked to submission, sieved, bound with a mother sauce, finished with raw butter — were a staple of nineteenth-century French kitchen grammar, and Ranhofer runs through them in series, sprouts at No. 707, cabbage here, carrots next. Milan and Savoy are two common names for the same crinkle-leaved cabbage, chou de Milan and chou de Savoie both being current in French. The cross-references to numbered stocks and sauces are characteristic of the book, which assumes a brigade with béchamel and white broth already standing ready rather than a household cook starting from nothing.