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Sauer Kraut (Enough sliced cabbage to fill)
Enough sliced cabbage to fill 1 qt. jar. Add 1 t salt. Pack very solid in Mason jar. Turn cover on but not too tight. Let stand 3 days. Then turn cover on tight and store away until ready to use.
This is a fermentation recipe compressed to four lines, and the compression removes everything that makes sauerkraut safe. The problems are specific and they are not fixable by adjusting the timing.
- The salt is roughly a quarter of what is neededThe salt is roughly a third of what modern guidance calls for -- Tested sauerkraut is made at about 2 to 2.5 percent salt by weight of cabbage, which for a packed quart jar works out to roughly 2 to 3 teaspoons. One teaspoon puts the ferment under 1 percent, a concentration at which the desired lactobacilli have much less advantage over spoilage yeasts, moulds and other bacteria.
- No brine coverage is specifiedCabbage must be submerged under its own expressed liquid for the whole ferment. With this little salt, enough liquid may never be drawn out, leaving the top of the jar exposed to air where moulds and aerobic bacteria grow.
- Three days is not a fermentA quart of kraut at room temperature takes roughly three to six weeks to ferment out. At three days the ferment is only beginning, the acidity is not developed, and nothing has actually been preserved before the jar is closed.
- Sealing a live ferment is a pressure hazard"Turn cover on tight and store away" traps carbon dioxide from active fermentation in a rigid glass jar. That risks the lid blowing or the jar cracking, and it creates the anaerobic, low-acid, room-temperature conditions associated with Clostridium botulinum.
- No temperature and no storage locationFermentation rate and outcome depend heavily on holding temperature, with tested guidance usually specifying about 70 to 75F. The recipe gives no temperature, no cellar, no crock weight and no instruction to refrigerate or heat-process the finished jars. Judging the result by "until ready to use" is not a control.
- If you want sauerkrautUse a current tested recipe with salt given by weight, a submerged ferment, and a stated finishing step. This one should be read, not followed.
Church and community cookbooks from the upper Midwest carry sauerkraut recipes as a matter of course, and the region drew substantial German and Central European settlement, among whom cabbage put down for winter was a staple rather than a novelty. The word is simply German for "sour cabbage," and the technique — salting shredded cabbage so its own juice draws out and lactic bacteria acidify it — is long established and was commonly practiced in large stoneware crocks in a cool cellar, weighted with a plate and a stone. What this entry appears to document is crock knowledge being compressed into the Mason jar, a vessel patented in the mid-nineteenth century and widespread in American kitchens by 1900. The compression is exactly where the recipe fails: a contributor working from long familiarity could write four lines and be understood, while a reader without that background is left with no salt ratio, no weight, no temperature and no timeline.