Red Cabbage & Sausage Soup

Red cabbage is a nutritious vegetable often prepared with apples or applesauce or pears and various spices as a side dish or as part of a main dish where meat like sausages or pork are served on top of red cabbage. It is common in German cuisine; that is, German in the broad sense that includes not only in Germany, but also Austria, Switzerland and Alsace, but I'm not certain about Luxembourg or Liechtenstein), and also in German immigrant communities in the U.S. (and I "assume" Canada and perhaps Brazil).     

 

This recipe takes red cabbage in a little different direction by making it a big part of soup. By letting the sausage slices not just warm up, but actually remain in the soup for the last part of cooking, they will give give added flavor to the soup. 

 

 

Ingredients:

 

5 cups shredded red cabbage

5 cups beef broth

1 cup water 

4 cloves garlic, chopped

2 bay leaves

2 teaspoons ground allspice

1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar

3 tablespoons tomato ketchup 

1 or 2 frankfurters, sliced (slices of about 1/3 inch)

1 or 2 cooked bratwursts, sliced (slices of about 1/3 inch)

1 teaspoon ground black pepper  

1/2 teaspoon salt (if the beef broth is salty, you can skip adding this salt)

sour cream for garnish

 

You can easily make this in a crock pot or slow cooker by putting all of the ingredients, except the sausages and sour cream, into the cooker and cooking everything on high setting for one hour, then turn the heat to low and cook it for 4 to 5 hours, or until the cabbage is tender. Add the cut up sausages for the last 45 minutes. Otherwise, in a pot or large pan over high heat, you can do the same: add all of the ingredients except the sausages and sour cream. Bring the soup to a simmer, then adjust the heat to simply maintain a steady simmer. Cook until the cabbage is just about done, then add the sausage slices and stir well to mix. Let the soup come back to a simmer and let it cook for 30 minutes more. Serve with a dollop of sour cream in the middle of each serving.

The sausage slices get dyed from the red cabbage ...

 

 

WORD HISTORY:

 Ledger-This noun, related to "lay," "lie" (not the "untruth"), "lair" and "low" (all original English words from its Germanic roots), goes back to Indo European "legh," which meant, "to lie flat, to lie down, to lay;" thus also, "to sleep or rest in a flat position." This gave its Old Germanic offspring, "lagjan(an)," with the same basic meanings. This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "lecgan," meaning, "to make to lie down, to set or place." This then became "leggen," and this spawned the noun, "legger," meaning, "a book that lies in a particular place," often used in reference to religious writings centuries ago, but by the second half of the 14th Century, it was used as "ledger book," to mean, "a book of business transactions, business account book," although it was often simply used as "ledger." The word also was used in fishing for "ledger bait;" that is, "bait that was made to be kept in the same place." From what I can tell, English is the only language to use a form of the word in the account book context, which is an English invention. It has relatives in the other Germanic languages, but with other meanings, mainly "lay/lie," although some have borrowed "ledger" from English as a synonym for their own words, which often mean "main book."