Some of my friends in northern latitudes can't plant anything outside yet, but down here the heat is already setting in. We haven't gotten to the truly miserable temperatures yet, but winter is definitely over.
With that in mind, we had half a cabbage in the refrigerator, and cooking it in milk doesn't seem as nice without the chilly weather.
| Sweet-Sour Cabbage 2 tbsp butter, cooking oil, or fat of choice 4 cups shredded cabbage 2 tart apples, thinly sliced Salt and pepper to taste Boiling water 2 tbsp flour ¼ cup brown sugar 2 tbsp vinegar Melt the fat in a large skillet. Add the cabbage and apples. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in enough boiling water to almost cover everything. Bring to a brisk boil, then cook for about 6 minutes or until tender but slightly crisp, stirring and submerging everything with the spoon so that all is evenly cooked. As the cabbage and apples soften, they will shrink and stay under the water on their own. While the cabbage is cooking, mix the flour and brown sugar in a small bowl, breaking up any flour-lumps. Then stir the vinegar into them. When the cabbage is ready, pour the vinegar mixture into it and quickly stir to prevent it from clumping. Cook for another minute or two, until thickened. Note: If you slice the apples thinly, you don't need to worry about peeling them. The small strips of apple peel will blend right in with the cabbage.
Source: Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933, via The Internet Archive
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| Mrs. Mary Martensen's Century of Progress Cook Book (recipes from The Chicago American), 1933 |
I love the bygone lyricality of a sentence like "Heat fat in spider."
Today's directions don't mention peeling the apples, so I didn't. When this book was printed, the Depression was on. Who in their right mind would pare away their grocery money and throw it in the trash?
When you start a recipe by melting butter in a skillet, you usually add your next ingredients and push them around the pan for a while. But today, we are told to skip the tedious pan-frying business and just boil everything. This recipe economizes on time as well as groceries.
The directions don't tell us how much water to add, so I poured in enough to almost cover the cabbage. In theory, the cabbage would shrink enough to be immersed without swimming in a watery surplus.
Of course, someone in Mrs. Mary Martensen's day would have needed to set a pot on the burner next to the skillet (or "spider" as they used to call it), but we at A Book of Cookrye took a leap of extravagance and bought... this!
It can boil a pint of water in like 90 seconds-- and even faster in the summer when the tap water isn't as cold. (For our metric friends, it boils about 5 deciliters in 9-ish decaseconds.) I never realized how much time I spend waiting for water to boil until I no longer had to.
I theorize that our electric kettle is so overpowered because it comes from Canada. After all, their tap water is ice-cold during much of the year.
Kitchen toys aside, it was soon time to add the sweet and the sour to the cabbage. I like that Mrs. Mary Martensen waits until the end of the cooking time before adding the vinegar. Otherwise it would have boiled away, leaving the kitchen pungent and the cabbage bland.
We are directed to serve this with "potato dumplings," so I found room in the oven for some sweet potato boulettes next to the dessert.
This recipe delivers exactly what the title promises. It is sweet, it is sour, and it is cabbage.This recipe was just sweet enough to be nice without being candied. True, it wasn't a gastronomical thrill on its own. But I think that makes it a very versatile side dish. It's flavorful enough to be good, but also neutral enough to go with nearly anything.
You might think the apple skins were unpleasant, but they blended right in with the surrounding cabbage. If you cut your apples as thinly as shown below, you will barely notice the peels.
In a later batch, I used cider vinegar and also added a shake of nutmeg. (Some online friends from Germany taught me that nutmeg and cabbage go together like salt and pepper.) I should have heeded the warning in the book's introduction: "Experimental changes in a good recipe are rarely successful." The cider-vinegar-and-nutmeg version tasted like apple pie with cabbage in it.
I tried to tell myself that it was like a pie from the time before developed a rigid savory-sweet divide between the main dish and dessert. I also reminded myself that cabbage is cheap but it isn't free. I didn't throw the cabbage/apple pie filling away, but I won't repeat it.
But I don't want anyone to leave today thinking this is a dud recipe just because I made some ill-advised changes. It's pretty good if you stick to the ingredients that are written. It's especially nice in hot weather because it's not too rich or heavy. And the short cooking time means you barely heat up the kitchen.
