This was one of the dishes cooked by Lotte Rigol, the second of the three young German women employed by my parents to look after me between the ages of three and seven. The smell from the kitchen was heavenly. Rather than Savoy cabbage she used white cabbage: perhaps that was all that was available in those days of rationing and shortages. Watching her tie it, tightly and intricately, was part of the pleasure. There was never any sauce save a glistening bouillon. One point
