Pepper Slaw, Pickled Cabbage

The sugar and vinegar makes this a sweet and sour side dish that was found in Pennsylvania Dutch and German meals. It is different from creamy coleslaw.

A few new talks have been added, including Saturday, so I am putting out a fast post before Sunday.

For a weekend gathering at a Pa. friend's hearth, I made the pepper slaw to go with the Schnitz und Knepp on Friday.

My grandmother's one set of grandparents came over from Germany in 1870, her other grandparents' families were also Germans from much earlier. So she did alot with sweet and sour (pickled beet eggs, hot bacon dressing on dandelion leaves, etc).

Her Pepper Slaw had a shredded cabbage, green bell pepper (she didn't use red bell peppers) chopped fine and a carrot, stir in salt. Heat cider vinegar (~2/3 or 3/4C), water (~1/3 or 1/4C) and sugar (~1C) until the sugar is dissolved, then pour over the greens. Add freshly grated black peppercorns. Sit all day or overnight.

Pepper Slaw Relish
Chop fine a head of cabbage with one red and one green pepper, season with pepper and salt, and add a teaspoonful each of celery and mustard seed. Put in jars and cover with vinegar or use after standing a few hours.
Home cookery : collection of tried recipes from many households / selected by the ladies of the Newton Universalist Church, Newtonville, Mass. 1899 3d ed

Pepper Cabbage
Cut fine three small heads of cabbage, two stalks of celery, one-half dozen peppers; rub a handful of salt through the cabbage; add celery and peppers and one pound of sugar; mix all well together and add one quart of vinegar. -Mrs. C. E. B.
The Home Adviser. Ladies’ Aid Society of Olivet Methodist Episcopal Church. Coatesville, Pa. 1911 (east of Lancaster)

Pickled Red Cabbage - British version, not German... no sugar!
This is the most common of all pickles, and assuredly one of the most agreeable. It has often been placed in a line with the sour krout of the Germans; though this latter is a disagreeable preparation of fermented cabbage without vinegar... Pickled cabbage is despised in favour of this German abomination; and yet to our particular liking, and, as it seems from the immense quantity made and consumed, to the liking of the majority of the English, pickled cabbage is one of the most agreeable, as it is one of the most unpretending of pickles.

Cut it into slices for pickling, and as you cut it, put it in layers into a colander, strewing a handful of salt upon each layer. After letting it drain a couple of days, put it into a stone jar, with a beetroot sliced. Boil a sufficient quantity of vinegar, with a sliced nutmeg, a little allspice, a good handful of peppercorns, and a bunch of tarragon. Pour the boiling-hot vinegar over the cabbage. When quite cold, cork and bladder the jar.
The Magazine of Domestic Economy (Aug 1838) 1839

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