Sauerkraut

By Eilene Lyon

In America we tend to think of sauerkraut as a traditional German dish. It was also an important food to my 3^rd great-grandparents in the Jenkins-Bedford line. Their heritage was Welsh-English, not German. Abigail (Bedford) Jenkins mentions it twice in her gold-rush letters to her husband, Henry Z. Jenkins.

From August 1851: “our cabbage are heading nicely  we hope thee will be here to eat craut…”

From June 1852: “we have all from the little run to the orchard planted with truck we had thought thee would certainly be home to eat saurcraut this season with us but I suppose we will be disappointed in that…”

Clearly they did not make the “craut” for purely health reasons or simply to preserve the cabbage—it was a tasty treat! Pork was a protein mainstay in their diet. These two staples went together like, well, pork-and-sauerkraut.

Sauerkraut, or fermented cabbage, is not a European invention at all. There’s evidence for it in Mesopotamia dating back perhaps five thousand years. Allegedly, Genghis Kahn brought it from Mongolia to eastern Europe in the 12^th century.¹ Koreans have their own preparation known as kimchi, but aside from seasonings and fermentation method, it is essentially the same thing as sauerkraut.

While this preserved cabbage helped sailors prevent scurvy on long sea voyages, the vitamin C we may get from traditionally made sauerkraut is hardly necessary to our diet. We get plenty of ascorbic acid from modern foods without even trying.

Perhaps you’d enjoy a bit of a scientific explanation for what happens when you combine shredded cabbage and salt in a crock and store it for several weeks. Salt breaks down the cell walls in a way our digestive system can’t. This cellular rupture allows us to absorb the nutrients found in the cruciferous vegetable, and it “releases isothiocyanate, or mustard oil…This oil adds subtle flavors and aromas.”

Salt prevents the growth of microorganisms that could spoil the food, making it either toxic or unpalatable (slimy). It does not harm some good bacteria found in the cabbage, “namely the lacto-fermentive critters Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Lactobacillus brevis, and Lactobacillus plantarum.” Yum. From these we get the lactic acid that contributes to the good taste of the finished product.² Undesirable is acetic acid (vinegar).

A recent study, concerned with the preparation of fermented foods in retail and food service establishments, tested the effects of the process on introduced E. coli and Listeria pathogens. As fermentation reduced the pH well into the acidic range, both potentially lethal organisms died off. After nine days they had effectively disappeared entirely. So, if you’re buying kraut or kimchi at your local health food store, you just need to be sure it’s at least that old to be on the safe side.³

If you’d like to try making your own sauerkraut, there are modern recipes available (including in the “Germs Preserve Us” article cited, which is a great read, BTW). Here are a couple I found from the early 20^th century that might be much as my ancestors prepared it. They contradict one another in a particular detail: one says don’t pound it, the other recommends vigorous pounding.

Recipe 1

“In answer to Mrs. J. N’s. request for sauerkraut recipe the following one is very good and makes a kraut that stays white and will keep until the last of it is used up. There will be no trouble with mouldy [sic] or spoiled kraut on top.

“Use a stone crock or oak keg. Shred the cabbage fine and long with a kraut cutter. Use one tablespoon salt for each gallon of cabbage, no more. Mix salt thoroughly with cabbage before putting into keg. I mix a gallon at a time. Use hands or wooden spoon, never metal. Press in keg until solid, but do not pound as this bruises cabbage and makes it dark. Set in a cool place and if not enough brine to cover pour on water until it is all covered, adding each day as needed. Be sure to keep plenty of water over the top of cabbage and weight it down. If skum [sic] rises on water, skim it off. Boone Co., M. B.”⁴

Recipe 2

“I enclose a copy just as it was written for us by an old German neighbor many years ago. If any reader doesn’t own a kraut cutter, very good work can be done with a large slaw cutter. A wooden potato masher may be used for a pounder. Be sure to use rock salt.

“Split the cabbage in two and cut out the heart, also cut out coarse parts of ribs if it is very coarse. Adjust your cutter close, according to directions, the second and third knives elevated accordingly. Discard all rough material. A large handful of wheat flour at the bottom of your crock or barrel; a layer of about three inches of cabbage, and after being pounded down well, sprinkle with a small handful of rock salt and a few grains of whole black pepper. Put down the second layer in the same way, and use besides salt a sprinkling of juniper berries; you can get them at any drugstore. Keep this rule up alternately, and pound hard until the water is covering the kraut. Then cover the whole top with clean cabbage leaves. Use a hard wooden cover with a clean heavy stone on top. Once a week the fermenting juice should be skimmed off, wooden cover and stone being washed at the same time and you will have the most delicious sauerkraut. M. D.  New York”⁵

Feature image: Russians preparing cabbage for winter. (Wikimedia Commons)