Home › The Belgian Kitchen › Red Cabbage (Mince the cabbage and put it)
Red Cabbage (Mince the cabbage and put it)
Mince the cabbage and put it in a pan with plenty of refined fat (clarified fat) and two or three large potatoes, pepper and salt. Add sufficient water to cover it, with a dash of vinegar and six dessert-spoonfuls of brown or moist sugar. Let it simmer for four hours, drain it and serve cold.
A plain Flemish braise of red cabbage, sweet-sour and cooked far longer than modern practice requires. Two things carry it: enough acid to keep the colour, and the potatoes, which are there to thicken rather than to be served as potatoes.
- The vinegar is not optionalRed cabbage owes its colour to anthocyanins, which turn dull blue-grey in neutral or alkaline water and stay red in acid. A "dash" is understating it — reckon on two to three tablespoons for a medium head, added at the start rather than the end.
- Refined fat"Refined fat (clarified fat)" means lard, clarified beef dripping or clarified butter — the household's rendered cooking fat, not oil. No quantity is given; two to three tablespoons is enough to coat the cabbage before the water goes in.
- Dessert-spoonfulsA dessert-spoon sits between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, roughly two teaspoons. Six of them is about four tablespoons of sugar, which is sweet but in line with Low Countries red cabbage. Moist or brown sugar means an unrefined soft brown.
- What the potatoes doTwo or three large potatoes simmered four hours will largely break down and help bind the liquid, though the vinegar slows that a little. If you want them to hold their shape, add them nearer the end instead — but then the dish stays loose.
- Four hours is a coal-range timingFour hours is a long time -- On a modern hob, shredded red cabbage is tender in 45 to 60 minutes covered, and 90 minutes gives a soft, jammy braise; four hours is far longer than the vegetable needs.
- DrainingDrain it while hot, then cool, or the cabbage keeps drinking the liquid and turns watery in the middle. Save the drained liquid — reduced, it makes a sharp-sweet dressing to spoon back over.
- Served coldThis is a salad or a cold side for cold meat, ham or sausage, not a hot vegetable. It improves after a day in the refrigerator and keeps a week.
- YieldOne medium red cabbage of about 2 lb, minced, gives six to eight servings as a side.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled by Mrs Brian Luck in 1915 from recipes gathered from Belgian refugees who had fled to Britain after the German invasion, and its plainness is part of the record: these were dishes dictated from memory by people cooking in other people's kitchens. Sweet-sour red cabbage of this kind is standard across Flanders and the neighbouring Dutch and German-speaking regions, where the combination of vinegar, fat and brown sugar with a long slow braise is old enough that no single origin can be fixed to it.