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SAUER KRAUT (another way)
Select sound solid cabbages, slice them across, and place the slices in a barrel in layers about four inches high; over each layer strew a handful of salt and some caraway-seeds. Press the whole down tightly, and when the barrel is full place a heavy weight upon the end. After standing a week, according to the temperature, the mass will begin more or less to ferment; and when the fermentation is over the barrel should be headed up. There is no vinegar used in the preparation.
A bare-bones account of lacto-fermented cabbage that assumes a cellar, a barrel and a cook who has seen it done before. The proportions are the part that needs pinning down.
- Salt by weight, not by handfulThe single thing that decides whether this works is the salt ratio: 2 to 2.5 per cent of the trimmed cabbage weight, so roughly 20-25 g salt per kilo. Too little and the cabbage softens and spoils; too much and fermentation stalls. Use plain salt without iodine or anti-caking agents.
- Scale of the originalA barrel filled in four-inch layers means tens of pounds of cabbage. For a household batch, 2-3 lb of cabbage in a 2-quart jar or small crock behaves the same way and is far easier to watch.
- "Slice them across"Cut the head in half, cut out the core, and shred across the grain about the thickness of a coin. Even shreds release brine at the same rate; chunks sit dry in the middle of the pack.
- Everything must stay under the brinePressing the layers down is not just compaction, it is what draws water out of the cabbage to form the covering liquid. If after 24 hours the brine does not cover the cabbage, top up with a solution of 1 teaspoon salt to 1 cup water. Any shred sitting in air will mould.
- The weightA plate with a water-filled jar on top, or a purpose-made fermentation weight, does the work of the barrel head and stone. Whatever the old headed cask did with the gas of fermentation, a modern screw-top jar must be burped daily or fitted with an airlock.
- Temperature and timing"According to the temperature" is the honest part of the instruction. At 65-70F fermentation is active within two to three days and largely finished in three to four weeks; in a cool cellar at 55F it may take six weeks or more. Cooler and slower gives better texture and flavour.
- CarawayCaraway is the German standard and is there for flavour rather than for preservation. Juniper berries or dill seed are also used; all are optional.
- Judging itFinished kraut smells sharply sour and clean, tastes tart rather than salty, and the bubbling has stopped. Cloudy brine and a white film of kahm yeast on the surface are normal and can be skimmed; fuzzy coloured mould, sliminess or a rotten smell means the batch goes out.
- Keeping itOnce fermentation ends, move it to the refrigerator, where it holds for months. The original's "headed up" barrel relied on a cold cellar for the same purpose.
- YieldShredded cabbage packs down a good deal under salt and weight; reckon on somewhere near a pint of finished kraut per pound of raw cabbage, and treat the figure as approximate.
The line "there is no vinegar used in the preparation" is the point of the entry. Cassell's was writing for British readers who knew pickled cabbage as something steeped in spiced vinegar, and needed telling that this German import sours itself. The souring is lactic acid fermentation: salt draws water from the shredded leaves, the resulting brine suppresses spoilage organisms, and lactic acid bacteria already present on the cabbage take over and acidify the whole mass. The name is simply German for "sour cabbage", and the method is old and widespread across central and eastern Europe, where a barrel of it was winter's dependable green vegetable. Its reputation as an antiscorbutic is often invoked in the age of sail, though its effect at sea is bound up with the other provisions carried; Captain Cook took casks of it on the Resolution, and the vitamin C in raw cabbage survives fermentation rather better than it survives boiling.