The taste of winter in Germany is deep, rich purple. Few of the heavy, meaty dishes that mark festivities in the darkest time of the year come without Rotkohl. Stewed slowly and usually preserved in glass jars, it can now be had cheaply in supermarkets or, at a higher price, made to perfection in restaurant kitchens. Soft, but not quite mushy, richly spices, with a sweet note of apple counterbalancing the bite of vinegar, there is little to recall its veggetable origin. It is almost fruity, and many children who will balk at the mere suggestion of eating greens can be persuaded to have a portion of this seasonal pleasure. It almost feels as though it has been with us from the dawn of time, so deeply is it rooted in German holiday custom, but in fact, it is a relatively recent addition to our cuisine.
Red cabbage can be documented in German recipes since the sixteenth century, though it was probably known and used earlier in Italy. The earliest evidence we have suggests it was valued for its colour and served in salads. Thus, Marx Rumpolt writes:
Take a red cabbage head, cut it very small and cook it shortly in hot water. Then cool it quickly and season it with vinegar and oil. After it has lain in vinegar for a while, it turns beautifully red. (New Kochbuch clvii v)
This, incidentally, is a feature of the plant that has fascinated people for a long time: It is a natural pH indicator. A high acidity level will make it turn red, closer to neutral it will be purple, and an alkaline environment makes it very nearly blue. The more vinegar is traditionally added to the dish, the redder it is, the less of it, the closer to blue. However, the distinction between Rotkohl/Rotkraut in the north of Germany versus Blaukraut in the south did not come about because of culinary preferences. German simply lacked a widespread word to describe the blend of blue and red at the time the words were formed.
As late as 1723, it is still completely plausible for the Brandenburgisches Koch-Buch (a pirated edition of Maria Sophia Schellhammer‘s Die wohl-unterwiesene Köchin of 1697) to state that red cabbage “…only serves in salad.” (II.11, p. 453). It was probably served cooked, so the step to making it a warm dish would not have been great, but that did not make it the Rotkohl we know today. Despite the association with the north of Germany, the Hamburgisches Koch-Buch of 1830 gives these bare instructions:
Red Cabbage
The same is cut very thin, like Sauerkohl, and cooked in a stoneware pan with a glassful of red wine, vinegar, butter, and salt. It is covered and steamed slowly, then served. (VII.11, p. 216)
Johann Friedrich Baumann’s Der Dresdner Koch of 1844 describes a similar process, but suggests the sweet note we expect today as an option:
Steamed red cabbage
The red cabbage is cut in fine strings, like white cabbage is for steaming, and steamed like the latter with a large glassful of red wine or a little vinegar and meat broth. Finally, it is stirred with a few spoonfuls of brown sauce and seasoned as desired with pepper or a very small amount of sugar. (vol. 1 p. 378)
Our first encounter with the flavours of the modern version comes in the Anweisung in der feineren Kochkunst by Johann Rottenhöfer, personal cook to King Maximilian of Bavaria, in 1859:
Steamed red cabbage (Blaukraut)
Several heads of red cabbage have the coarse outer leaves removed and are halved and sliced thinly with a knife or cabbage slicer (geschnitten oder gehobelt). Then, a piece of white bacon is cut very fine, placed in a casserole, and sautéed to a yellow colour with two tablespoons full of finely cut onions. The cabbage is quickly washed and put in, then a glass of vinegar, the necessary salt, a piece of sugar, and a glass full of Burgundy are added together with two peeled apples cut in thin slices. Thus it is slowly steamed on a coal fire until it is soft, stirring frequently. Shortly before serving, it is lighly dusted (with flour) and cooked for a few minutes more. It is served piled high, with roasted pork cutlets or pieces of roast hare, bacon, roast bratwurst, mutton or veal cutlets and the like arranged around it. (#1313, p. 570)
This is clearly a courtly dish for an opulent table with many guests, but it comes quite close to what we know as Apfelrotkohl. The 1866 edition adds a further recipe for red cabbage à la Valencienne that adds pepper and nutmeg, two spices still popular. Meanwhile, the 1879 Illustrirtes Hamburger Kochbuch by Louise Richter moves in a similar direction:
No. 708 Red cabbage
You cook red cabbage as you do white Sauerkohl, except the caraway is omitted and white wine is used in place of red. (this is an error: red wine instead of white)
No 713 To cook pickled Sauerkohl
For 5 persons, take 2 pounds of Sauerkohl from the vat, press it out, and lay it in boiling water in which about 1 pound of pork belly has been boiling for an hour. Then you add a few large Musäpfel (mushy cooking apples), 2 glasses full of white wine, a tablespoon of sugar, and a teaspoon of ground caraway and let it cook slowly for about two hours until the cabbage is very soft. Now, you scatter a heaped spoonful of flour over it, stir it through, let it boil for a little longer, and serve it with bread dumplings (Semmelklößchen) or small potatoes cooked in salt water.
This does not really support the idea of an often-claimed origin in the Hamburg region. Rather, it seems to be a general fashion that we find very similarly in Isabella Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1859 edition #1099). Interestingly, while Mrs. Beeton suggests sugar and apples, Eliza Acton’s 1845 Modern Cookery for Private Families from which many of Beeton’s recipes are lifted does not. Here (p. 340), red cabbage is stewed with butter, pepper, and salt and has only vinegar added at the very end. This is much closer to the earlier recipes.
By the end of the 19th century, red cabbage as we know it has arrived fully. Katharina Prato’s Süddeutsche Küche suggests just a hint of apple:
Red cabbage. You cut the cabbage noodle-style, sprinkle it with a little vinegar, and leave it to stand for half an hour. 1 1/2 hours before serving, you put it into hot butter or lard with onions fried yellow, salt it, and layer slices of tart apples on top. Let it steam while regularly adding a small amount of broth. When the apples have softened, they are removed and stir the cabbage all the way through before serving it. If it is too little sour, add a little vinegar, if it is too sour, add a little sugar. (p. 156, 50th edition, Vienna 1912)
Her northern counterpart Henriette Davidis (32nd edition, 1901) is wordier:
Red cabbage or kappes. Red summer cabbage is preferable to winter cabbage because the latter has a stronger taste and requires twice as much time to cook. In preparing, cut the head in half, remove the coarse outer leaves and strong ribs, and slice or cut it into thin, long strips. To remedy its bloating effect, parboil it and mix it after draining with as much vinegar as will give it a shiny red colour. Then bring water to the boil with pork lard, goose or duck fat, or half suet and half butter. Add a few raisins, two sour apples cut in pieces, several small onions, a little sugar, and some salt and stew the cabbage soft in this. Best use Bunzlauer-style cooking pots (A type of glazed pottery still produced in Boleslawiec, Poland). Shortly before serving, dust a little flour over it and add a glass of red wine and, where this is liked, a few spoonfuls of redcurrant jelly. Steam quartered apples lying on top of the cabbage to serve it adorned with them. Cabbage cooked this way requires no further addition of vinegar because its fine flavour is tart enough and far more digestible than if it had received its tartness from vinegar. It is best to serve it with small fried potatoes, but where time is lacking, boiled salted potatoes can be served.
Kappes, incidentally, is a dialect term for cabbage found in the northern Rhine valley near the dutch border, and adding currant jelly to red cabbage is today thought of as a Dutch habit.
The twentieth century added little to this, but it simplified the recipe into the dish familiar not as a laboriously made one-off serving, but as suitable for preservation in glass jars to be opened at need. The famous ‘blue Book’ Das elektrische Kochen (4th edition, 1938) produced by the Berlin utilities company BEWAG suggests in its inimitably economical style:
Red cabbage
1 1/2 – 2 tablespoons of lard, 1 kg cleaned red cabbage, 1 onion stuck with cloves, salt, 3-5 tablespoons of water, 4 apples, sugar, 1 pinch of cinnamon, if liked, 1 pinch of cloves, vinegar
Spread the fat around the pot, layer in the finely sliced or cut cabbage, the onion stuck with cloves, salt, water, and the sliced apples, bring to a boil at setting 3 and steam for 35-45 minutes on setting 1, ten minutes without further electricity. Then add cinnamon, cloves, and vinegar to taste.
Finally, the much underrated, quietly ingenious Grete Willinsky leaves us intructions for the version without apples as well as with – now named for Hamburg – in the 1958 Kochbuch der Büchergilde:
Red cabbage (which called Blaukraut south of the Main river!)
2-3 pounds of red cabbage, 1 large onion, 3-4 cloves, 2 bay leaves, 100 g lard or goose fat, 1/2 cup of vinegar, 1 tablespoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of sugar, broth, water, or red wine
Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage, quarter it, remove the stalks and slice it very fine. Melt the fat in an enamelled pot, add the cabbage, and sauté it while stirring permanently. Then add the vinegar and stir it in thoroughly. Only then may you add meat broth or, better, a mix of meat broth and red wine in equal quantities (altogether about 1/4 of a litre). This is the only way the cabbage keeps its lovely red-violet colour. Now also add one large onion stuck with 3-4 cloves, 2 bay leaves, salt, pepper, and sugar, cover it, and let it stew on a low heat for 1-1 1/2 hours until it is done. Serve it with chestnuts or dumplings and venison or gamebirds, pork cutlets, pork roast, in some parts also goose and duck.
Red cabbage the Hamburg way
It is prepared exactly as described above, except that you add 2-3 peeled, cored, and julienned apples to the cabbage. In Pomerania, a pinch of caraway is popular, in Holland – a tablespoon of redcurrant jelly stirred in. (p. 200)
Willinsky follows up these recipes with one for red cabbage salad:
1 small red cabbage, salt water, 1 cup wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon vinegar, 3 tablespoons oil, salt, pepper, 1 pinch of sugar, apples if desired
Finely slice the cabbage, soak it in a cup of wine vinegar, and boil it in salt water for five minutes. Drain it and mix it with 1 tablespoon of vinegar, 3 tablespoons of oil, salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar while it is still warm. Add one peeled, cored, and julienned apple if you wish. The salad, once prepared, must rest for several hours to soften. Red cabbage salad is beautiful on a winter salad platter next to white cabbage, celeriac, and carrot salad.
Rumpolt would be proud.