Sauer-Kraut

Ingredients

• the white cabbage
• salt in fine powder sufficient to produce a good pickle
• butter
• standard broth
• a little good wine

Method

1. 1

   Shred the cabbage and mix it with salt.

2. 2

   Place it in a vessel, compress it, and allow it to ferment.

3. 3

   Wash the sauer-kraut to relieve excess acid, then stew it with butter and broth.

4. 4

   Add wine when nearly done.

As published

This recipe was extracted from The spirit of cookery (1895) by Johann Ludwig Wilhelm Thudichum, page 218. The excerpt below is the record exactly as published.

Sauer-kraut, was weU known to the ancient Eomans, and in the treatise on cookery of Cato of Utica occurs a prescription for its preparation ; one of the rustic writers of antiquity has such great faith in its peptic powers that he gives a kind of polytrophic advice, namely, to eat a plateful of sour-crout for dessert, which would make such quick work of the digestion of the dinner just had, that another meal could be eaten immediately afterwards. The white cabbage is the largest of all varieties of kales, and produces heads up to five pounds in weight. To pre- vent it from opening at the top, and to keep it close and white, it is, if intended for winter use, planted in June, and not taken off the field until late in September or October. When thus grown it produces in its tissue more sugar than any other kind of cabbage, namely, 2-3 per cent., besides 2'6 per cent, other non-nitrogenous matters, mainly SAUER-KRAUr 345 starch ; this starch, when the kale is allowed to become frozen and to thaw, is immediately transformed into sugar, like a portion of the starch in frozen potatoes, and then the vegetable becomes sometimes rather too sweet. Of nitro- genized matters white cabbage contains nearly 2 per cent., of solids altogether about 10 per cent., and 9 per cent, of water. This variety bears the names of Brassica oleracea capitata alba, Al. The sugar contained in it consists partly of dextrose, partly of inosite ; of the latter we have given some account under the paragraph relating to green beans. For the production of sauer-Tcraut the cabbage is shredded, mixed with salt in fine powder sufficient to produce a good pickle,’ placed in a vessel, e.g., a barrel, in a compressed state, and allowed to undergo the lactic-acid or sour-milk fer- mentation ; the sugar is thus transformed into lactic acid, and from this the produce derives its name of acid cabbage, or sour cabbage, or sauer-kraut. As a preparation for cook- ing, the sauer-kraut has to be washed, and thus relieved of excess of acid ; it is then to be stewed with butter, or other tasty fat, and standard broth, and when nearly done a little good wine

Cook this with the app: pantry check, scaling, and the assistant.