SC - Help! Cabbage! Cakes!

[lilinah@earthlink.net]

david friedman wrote:
> 
> At 11:32 AM -0400 10/23/00, Jenne Heise wrote:
> 
> >Pickled cabbage and 'sour cabbage' appear to be period, as mentioned in
> >the Domostroi (Russian Household Manual from the tiem of Ivan the
> >Terrible), so a sour kraut like dish would certain bein the period style.
> 
> There is something in Domostroi that is translated "sour cabbage
> soup." It seems to be an ingredient, not a final product, and the
> context makes me suspect that the translation is wrong. One
> possibility is that it might be alegar--the equivalent of vinegar
> made from ale. I am curious as to whether anyone else has more
> persuasive suggestions--or, better yet, has looked at the original
> Russian and can tell us what it actually says.

I have a mostly-modern Transylvanian cookbook by Paul Kovi, and he
describes use of a seasoning made by subjecting boiled, sterilized milk
to some kind of controlled fermentation, keeping it in a jar at room
temperature for several days, during which it becomes both sour and
bitter in flavor. Yes, for all of you that are ghoing to ask how this
happens to a sterile product in a sealed jar, that's a good question,
but that is apparently what happens. This milk stuff is then simmered
over a decreasing flame until it can be formed into blocks and dried.
The cubes are then added to soups as a seasoning for foods that are
supposed to have a sour and bitter flavor (maybe not unlike German wheat beer?).

It's remotely conceivable that "sour cabbage soup" is a similar product,
and that the name is simply the literal translation of something that we
wouldn't classify as soup.

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com