Home › Vegetables › German Cabbage
German Cabbage
Slice red cabbage and soak in cold water. Put one quart in stewpan with two tablespoons butter, one-half teaspoon salt, one tablespoon finely chopped onion, few gratings of nutmeg, and few grains cayenne; cover, and cook until cabbage is tender. Add two tablespoons vinegar and onehalf tablespoon sugar, and cook five minutes.
A braised red cabbage in the German style, cooked in butter rather than water. The recipe is workable as written; the omissions are quantities of liquid and time.
- The measure of cabbage"One quart" means a quart measure of sliced cabbage, loosely packed — four cups, or roughly half a small head. Slice it thin, which helps it soften in the modest liquid the recipe allows.
- Soaking, and why it matters hereThe cold soak was probably meant to crisp limp cabbage and to loosen grit. Since the recipe adds no water, the moisture clinging to the leaves and the cabbage's own juices appear to be the cooking liquid, so do not drain it bone dry: lift it straight from the water into the stewpan.
- StewpanA heavy saucepan with a well-fitting lid. A Dutch oven works better than a thin pan, since the cabbage cooks essentially by steaming in its own moisture over low heat.
- Heat and timeKeep it low and covered; 30 to 45 minutes for tender cabbage, stirring occasionally. If the pan runs dry before the cabbage yields, add water a tablespoon or two at a time rather than raising the heat.
- The vinegar goes in last for a reasonAcid slows the softening of the cabbage, so it is better to wait until the cabbage is already tender. It also affects the colour — red cabbage cooked without acid goes a dull blue-purple, and the vinegar shifts it back toward red.
- Vinegar and sugarCider vinegar suits the dish; white wine vinegar is fine. The half tablespoon of sugar balances the vinegar rather than making the dish sweet — taste and adjust both at the end.
- Cayenne"Few grains" means a scant pinch, well under an eighth of a teaspoon. It should not read as heat in the finished dish.
- YieldServes three or four as a side dish. It reheats well and is arguably better the next day.
Sweet-sour braised red cabbage — Rotkohl or Blaukraut, depending on the region — is a fixture of German cooking, and the vinegar in it is functional as much as flavoring: the anthocyanin pigments in red cabbage act as an acid indicator, turning blue in alkaline water and red in acid, which is why the German versions look purple-red on the plate. American cookbooks of the late nineteenth century collected a broad range of dishes labeled by nationality — German, Italian, Spanish, Creole — in a period when they were beginning to acknowledge immigrant cooking, though usually in trimmed and simplified form. This one is notably plain compared with home versions, which commonly add apple, bacon fat, cloves, or red wine; what survives here is the essential structure of butter, onion, nutmeg, vinegar and sugar.