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Fried Cabbage
1 cabbage, medium size 3 tablespoons bacon fat 1 cup diced apple 1 small onion minced 1/3 teaspoon caraway seed 1/4 teaspoon paprika Soak cabbage, cut fine, in salted water for ten minutes. Drain, add rest of ingredients and saute slowly in bacon fat, covered, for 1 hour. Serves 6.
A German-style skillet cabbage with apple and caraway, from a period when vegetables were expected to be cooked until soft. Most of the updating here concerns time.
- The hour is the thing to reconsiderShredded cabbage in a covered pan is tender in 20 to 30 minutes over low heat, sweet and still holding its shape. A full hour gives the collapsed, sulphurous cabbage of institutional memory. If you want the older texture, take it to 45 minutes and add a splash of water so it stews rather than scorches.
- The salted soakTen minutes in salted water was partly a matter of drawing out insects from unsprayed heads. It does no harm, but with a supermarket cabbage a rinse is enough. Drain and shake dry well, or the pan will steam instead of frying.
- Cabbage sizeA medium head runs roughly 2 to 2.5 lb, giving something like 8 to 12 cups shredded raw. Green or white cabbage is intended; savoy works and cooks faster.
- Bacon fatThree tablespoons of rendered bacon fat carries most of the seasoning, and there is no substitute that tastes the same. Lard plus a little smoked bacon, or the fat from two or three rashers cooked out first, will get you there. Butter or oil makes a milder, blander dish.
- AppleA cup diced is about one medium apple. A firm tart variety holds up over a long braise; a soft eating apple dissolves into the cabbage, which is not a fault but changes the dish into something closer to a puree.
- SeasoningThe recipe gives no salt beyond the soaking water, which contributes little. Salt to taste near the end, once the volume has cooked down. A tablespoon of cider vinegar stirred in at the finish sharpens the apple and is common in related German preparations.
- Caraway measureA third of a teaspoon is a fussy figure for a whole spice; a scant half teaspoon, lightly crushed or toasted in the fat before the cabbage goes in, gives a rounder flavour.
- ServingSix as a side. It reheats well and is better the second day; it belongs beside pork, sausage, or roast goose.
Cabbage braised in pork fat with apple and caraway is a German and Central European household dish that arrived in American cookbooks through immigrant kitchens, and by the 1920s and 1930s it turns up in mainstream American cookbooks without any ethnic label attached. The pairing has a practical logic behind it: cabbage and apples are both long-keeping autumn crops that shared the same root cellar, and caraway was traditionally held to make cabbage easier to digest.