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Cabbage Soup
Remove all outer leaves and core of a very small green cabbage. Cut into small pieces, wash well in cold water, drain. Place in a saucepan with half ounce butter, set the pan on the fire and cook till the moisture is nearly evaporated, or about ten minutes, frequently mixing meanwhile. Moisten with three quarts white broth or water. Season with two light teaspoons salt and half teaspoon white pepper; add a two-ounce piece salt pork, one medium carrot and one onion. Cover pan and let boil for thirty minutes. Peel and wash two large, raw potatoes. Cut in quarters, finely slice and add to the soup. Re-cover the pan and let boil for one hour. Remove the pork, carrot and onion. Pour the soup into a hot soup tureen and serve.
A plain French-style cabbage soup that depends on two things: sweating the cabbage dry before any liquid goes in, and cooking the potatoes long enough to break down and body the broth. Everything else is seasoning.
- Sweat the cabbage firstThe ten minutes in butter before liquid is added is the hinge. Driving off the moisture takes away the raw sulphurous edge and concentrates the sweetness; if you dump the cabbage straight into broth you get a thinner, cabbagier soup. Keep the heat moderate and stir so it does not colour.
- Half ounce butterAbout one tablespoon. It is a small amount for a very small cabbage, so use a wide pan and stir often.
- White brothA light unbrowned stock, traditionally veal or chicken made without roasting the bones. Any mild chicken stock works; avoid dark beef stock, which will overwhelm the vegetables. Water alone is offered in the original and is perfectly workable given the salt pork.
- Salt porkA two-ounce piece of cured fatback or streaky pork, added whole for flavour and removed before serving. Unsmoked bacon or pancetta in a single chunk substitutes. Because it salts the pot as it cooks, hold back some of the two teaspoons of salt and correct at the end.
- The carrot and onion are aromaticsThey go in whole or halved and come out at the end, like the pork. If you would rather eat them, dice them and leave them in, but then expect a sweeter, more vegetable-heavy soup than intended.
- Cabbage sizeThe original gives no weight; a "very small" green cabbage is probably around a pound once trimmed. Against three quarts of liquid this is a broth-forward soup, not a stew.
- That final hourFinely sliced potato boiled an hour will collapse, which is the point: the starch thickens the broth. If you want visible slices, 25 to 30 minutes is enough, but the soup will be noticeably thinner.
- YieldThree quarts of liquid gives eight generous bowls, or six with second helpings. It reheats well and thickens further overnight.
Cabbage, onion, potato and a scrap of salt pork is the backbone of French country soup — soupe aux choux, the thinner relative of the potée in which the same ingredients are cooked with enough meat to make a main course. The pattern is older than the potato in Europe and absorbed it readily once it took hold in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; here the potato does the job that bread or barley once did, giving the broth body. What marks this version out is the discipline of the method: the cabbage is dried in butter before moistening, the stock is specified as white rather than brown, and the pork, carrot and onion are treated as flavourings to be lifted out rather than food to be served.