A thick farmhouse soup of cabbage, beans and root vegetables, cooked with ham and confit until a spoon nearly stands in it.
What makes it garbure
Cabbage and dried beans, thick enough to be a meal.
Cured ham or confit for depth and fat.
Long, slow cooking, and better reheated.
Where it comes from
It was the everyday meal of farms in the foothills of the Pyrenees, kept going on the stove and added to, and Béarn and Bigorre have the strongest claims to it. Whatever was in the store — a ham bone, a piece of confit, the season's vegetables — went in.
Many finish it by faire chabrot: pouring a splash of red wine into the last of the broth in the bowl and drinking it straight from the bowl.
How it varies
Chabrot
Not a version but a ritual — red wine swirled into the end of the bowl.