The spring of 1938 Leora bought day-old Leghorn chicks from Pop Scott’s, for fried chicken and for eggs to eat and sell. The Wilson family planted lettuce, spinach, onions, green beans, bushels of tomatoes and the nicest cabbage they’d ever raised. Leora poured suds water from the family wash over the cabbage plants to ward off worms. She sold some of the cabbage to a local grocer and Clabe made sauerkraut in ten-gallon stone jars.
To make kraut, Leora chopped the cabbage and Clabe added kosher salt to it in large crocks. He cut boards to fit into the top of the crocks, weighting the boards with bricks to keep the cabbage under the brine as it began to form.
Autumn is the best time to make sauerkraut since late season varieties of cabbage contain more natural sugars that help with fermentation.
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I didn’t find a recipe for sauerkraut among Grandma Leora’s keepsakes. Perhaps Clabe just made it from memory, but here is a simple recipe.
In Leora’s little Memorandum book, dated March 31st, 1915, she wrote and pasted recipes. One is for cabbage salad dressing.
Cabbage Salad Dressing One egg Butter size of an egg One teaspoon of cornstarch Two tablespoons of sugar One-half cup of sweet milk Boil all this and then pour over chopped cabbage.
From Leora’s Dexter Stories.
Wow, homemade sauerkraut. I don”t have it often, but sometimes it really hits the spot.
Your comment is so welcome, Mitch! Praying for your recovery!
Isn’t that fantastic! You not only have the book, but now we can all eat as they did. Good food!!
The real stuff, huh, GP!
I was raised on sauerkraut. Mom and Dad didn’t use a recipe, they just made it like their parents did, and their parents before them.
You were raised on the good stuff, Darlene!
Love sauerkraut! But it’s like bagpipe music–a little goes a long way! 🙂
When I can eat “normally,” I often have a couple of pickled beets (with my own raspberry vinegar) or cold sauerkraut for breakfast with tuna salad. Really!
My ancestors were making kraut back in the mid-1800s. Don’t know of any more recent efforts. I like that idea of the soapy water. Bugs on brassicas is a real problem. Have you tried that recipe?
I didn’t grow up eating sauerkraut, I suppose because Dad wasn’t fond of it, but I wish I had. I just might have tried to make my own at one time! (I had to look up brassicas, Eilene!)
The most edible of plant families!
So, that’s how you make sauerkraut! Learned something new.
I didn’t grow up with it either. Fascinating stuff, and healthy for your tummy.
That recipe book is a real piece of history. I’m afraid I never developed much of a taste for sauerkraut.
We didn’t have it at home, so I don’t know when I developed a taste for it–cold, straight from the jar!
I never knew how sauerkraut is actually made!
I didn’t either. I thought vinegar was involved. The fermentation does good stuff for our innards!
I love saurekraut, and this was an interesting post. Thanks, Joy
Thank you, John!
Joy, my family loves sauerkraut! My Grandpa Wilson had a brother named Clabe. Aren’t these family treasures just priceless??
My Grandpa Clabe’s name was Claiborne Daniel Wilson, named after a good friend of his father’s. Clabe and Leora lost three sons during WWII. That’s why I started writing, to make sure they are never forgotten. Clabe died about a year later, but Leora–having lost three infants during the Great Depression and those three sons during the war, then widowed–was my delightful grandmother for another four decades!
Cabbage is a power food any way you prepare it. No wonder Leora lived so long! 🙂
I think you’re right, Nancy.