Lets Consider the Poor Cabbage

Lets consider the poor cabbage, a primitive plant with a variety of personality disorders. In the book “On Food and Cooking”, Harold McGee describes the earliest wild cabbage as having developed a tough waxy cuticle and thick, water storing leaves as a reaction to the hot
Mediterranean sun. More cactus than vegetable, cabbage was left behind by other vegetables and fruits of the region. While peas, cherries, dates and figs sweeten and soften as they mature, surrendering to the warmth of the sun, cabbages, whether Napa, Savoy, red and white, all members of Brassica oleracea, an ancient and stubborn tribe of vegetables, remain bitter.

Botanically, each head of cabbage is a single bud and the longer it remains in the field the more acrid it becomes. While cooking, cabbages neither sweeten nor mellow, they simply become more and more cabbagey, developing that familiar rotten egg smell of sulfur.

Perhaps because of this intractable nature, cabbages attracts both revulsion and admiration. It is impossible to change cabbage. It is however, possible to change everything around cabbage, thereby altering, limiting or exploiting the vegetable’s endless bitterness. Take Sauerkraut, for instance.

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