Sweet & Sour Cabbage Soup - The Elixir

As a Catholic boy growing up in Skokie, I wasn't exposed to this stuff much before high school, but once I started visiting two haunts on Dempster Street--The Gold Coin and Sam & Hy's--I was hooked. The yin, the yang, the FLANKEN! (Is there any more tender or flavorful meat?) When I have had a taste for it, I'd drive miles if I knew the version was good. The Bagel's former Old Orchard location had a fair rendition. So does The Buffalo Restaurant in Buffalo Grove. Just OK. But not like the older places.

Through the years, I'd try to make this and would fail miserably. Americanized recipes and too much work, dammit!

Until now. My friend Barry turned me onto this recipe for Russian Sweet & Sour Cabbage soup, and my daughter made it the other night. Uh, it's the real deal, with the key being the delicate balance between sweet & sour. She used all lemon juice for the sour, where it was proportioned right with the sugar but didn't have quite the tanginess I 'm used to. Next time, I think I'd tweak it by taking half the lemon juice and replacing the other half with white cider vinegar. We also added white potato chunks but I am told traditionally the soup is poured over a piping hot boiled white potato.

Other than that, just enjoy, folks.

Hi,

Years ago, EatChicago's wife Cookie made Bess Feigenbaum’s Cabbage Soup from the NYT. (I copied this recipe long ago, so I can provide a copy to anyone who sends a pm with their email.)

FYI - I almost never have as much tomato paste as the recipe calls for. I add a few extra shots of catsup. The other day, I had a 90-ounce can of roma tomatoes. Triple recipe called for 84 ounces, I threw in the extra six ounces for good measure. It is a flexible recipe.

Regards,
Cathy2

Cathy2 wrote:FYI - I almost never have as much tomato paste as the recipe calls for. I add a few extra shots of catsup. The other day, I had a 90-ounce can of roma tomatoes. Triple recipe called for 84 ounces, I threw in the extra six ounces for good measure. It is a flexible recipe.

Regards,
Cathy2

Sounds delicious. As for flexibility, I've always thought of that as offering an element of authenticity to food prep -- because for most of history and in most of the world, "what do we have" has been a key aspect of cooking.

jnm123 wrote:As a Catholic boy growing up in Skokie, I wasn't exposed to this stuff much before high school, but once I started visiting two haunts on Dempster Street--The Gold Coin and Sam & Hy's--I was hooked. ...

Through the years, I'd try to make this and would fail miserably. Americanized recipes and too much work, dammit!

Until now. My friend Barry turned me onto this recipe for Russian Sweet & Sour Cabbage soup, and my daughter made it the other night. Uh, it's the real deal, with the key being the delicate balance between sweet & sour. She used all lemon juice for the sour, where it was proportioned right with the sugar but didn't have quite the tanginess I 'm used to. Next time, I think I'd tweak it by taking half the lemon juice and replacing the other half with white cider vinegar.

I never tried the soup at Gold Coin or Sam & Hy's so I'm not sure exactly what you're aiming for, but I'd still urge you to try sour salt, if only for authenticity ("Lemons didn't grow on trees..."). Years ago, I was trying to replicate a favorite sweet-sour cabbage soup – a vegetarian version from the Unique Delicatessen, a pretty good place in Hyde Park from mid-1940s through the '70s – and sour salt turned out to be a key ingredient. It brings a quality of sourness different from lemon juice or vinegar. For what it's worth, another important addition was crushed gingersnaps – an impossible-to-identify ingredient, but one that's missed when left out.

The recipe I used as a starting point came from The New York Times Bread and Soup Book (1972) by Yvonne Young Tarr. It's quite different from Grandma Nastia's (which sounds great), but it's a good recipe in its own right and could hardly be simpler to prepare. If anyone would like a look, here it is (I rewrote and shortened the instructions).

HANNAH'S SWEET AND SOUR CABBAGE SOUP

9 cups water
2-pound head of cabbage, shredded
1 ½ cups onion, finely diced
½ cup carrots, finely diced
¼ cup celery, finely diced
28-ounce can of tomatoes, coarsely chopped
8 ginger snaps, crumbled
2 teaspoons salt
½ teaspoon celery salt
½ teaspoon dried dill weed
¾ cup sugar
¼ cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon sour salt (citric acid)
Freshly ground black pepper

Boil water and add all ingredients except the sugars and sour salt; cover and simmer for 2 ¼ hours.

Add the sugars and sour salt; cook over medium heat for 15 minutes. Add more sugar, sour salt or salt, as necessary to suit your taste. Serve hot, sprinkled with pepper. Even better reheated the next day.

I grew up eating this (w/horseradish for the meat) accompanied by torn black bread and soft butter every winter. When I moved to SF @ 17 I asked my mother to send me the recipe. I still have the very stained recipe written in her beautiful cursive so unlike my childlike scrawl. This, my best friend's mother's lasagana and Shrimp de'Jonghe are the first things I cooked a decade prior to becoming a chef.

Fwiw, we never added apple or potato (or for that matter, ginger snaps) and if you wanted it more sour, we just squeezed more lemon @ the table. Funny thing was when I was working in Dublin I figured it would be a natural, and it was. Couldn't keep up w/the demand.

This thread has flooded me with emotion/memories.
I would love a recipe someone actually has made with success for Beet Borscht.
Since I do not eat it, I can not sift through recipes online and ascertain if it is what I am seeking.
Thank you!