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Cabbage, Rouennaise
Cut a very small green cabbage in quarters, remove the core and outer leaves, slice exceedingly fine, place in a saucepan with ounce butter and teaspoon salt, lightly mix, then cover the pan and cook on the fire for twenty minutes, stirring once in a while, moisten with three quarts water, add a half-pound piece salt pork and one beef marrow bone, cover the pan and let boil slowly for two hours, remove the bone and pork, skim the fat from the surface, pour the soup in a soup tureen, arrange six slices toasted French bread on top of the soup and serve.
A cabbage and salt pork soup that reads as a garbure in miniature; the only fussy parts are the shredding and the salt.
- YieldThree quarts of liquid, six slices of bread on top: this serves six as a first course, four as a supper.
- Slice "exceedingly fine"This matters more than it sounds. Hair-thin shreds collapse into the broth over two hours; thick ribbons stay stringy. Use a mandoline or the slicing disc of a food processor.
- The first twenty minutesThe cabbage sweats in butter, covered, before any water goes in. Keep the heat low and stir often enough that it never browns — this stage is where the sweetness comes from, and scorched cabbage will taint the whole pot.
- SaltA teaspoon at the start plus a half-pound of salt pork is a lot for three quarts. Depending on how salty your pork is, consider blanching it for five minutes and discarding the water, and hold back the teaspoon until you taste at the end.
- Marrow boneAsk the butcher for a cut center-cut beef shank bone, 2–3 inches. It contributes body and fat rather than much flavor. Roasting it at 425F for twenty minutes first gives a rounder broth.
- The pork and bone are not wasteThe recipe says remove them and stops there. Slice the pork and put it in the bowls, and spread the softened marrow on the toast, as is often done with French boiled meats.
- SkimmingTwo hours with pork and marrow leaves a heavy fat cap. Skim well, or chill the pot and lift the fat off solid before reheating.
- The toastDry the slices in a 350F oven rather than a toaster so they hold up in the broth instead of dissolving.
Rouennaise means "in the style of Rouen," the old capital of Normandy — butter country, cider country, and a region whose cooking leans on pork and cabbage rather than olive oil. The dish belongs to a very large European family of long-simmered cabbage soups thickened at the table by bread: the French soupe au chou and garbure, the Italian ribollita, the sops and pottages of medieval kitchens. Bread laid in the bowl and softened with broth is in fact the origin of the word soup itself, from the same root as sop.