From Colewort to Cabbage: The Incredible Evolution of Cabbage Noodles

Cabbage is one of the world’s oldest cultivated vegetables, and even today it remains one of the most widely grown and eaten. But turns out the original cabbage was pretty different from the green (or red) stuff you might find in your basic 21^st-century coleslaw.

Wild cabbage—which, as I just learned in the course of researching this post, is known as colewort (which kind of sounds like something the witches from Macbeth would’ve thrown in their cauldron)—resembled modern kale in shape, and had an extremely bitter flavor. So bitter, in fact, that both leaves and stalks required pickling or boiling to be palatable.

Colewort isn’t mentioned in the Bible—it didn’t arrive in the Middle East until the Greeks introduced it around 275 BCE, just in time for a few quick mentions in the Talmud. There it’s referred to as a healthful and sustaining vegetable, and in a list of chores noted rabbis performed to help their wives prepare for Shabbat it’s even recorded that noted Talmudist Rav Chisda’s weekly duties included cutting cabbage.

The first head cabbages—more like the kinds you’ll find in any grocery store today—evolved around the first century BCE, likely in northern Europe, but colewort remained the most important green for European peasants until the seventeenth century, when more modern forms of cabbage finally overtook it.

Colewort hit the Slavic territories of Europe by the ninth century, and it quickly became a mainstay of the local diet. What we know today as green cabbage emerged in Germany in the twelfth century, while savoy and red cabbages didn’t arrive on the scene until the sixteenth. Chinese cabbages belong to a different species entirely (and please, whatever you do, NEVER to use them for cabbage noodles.)

Cabbage remained the primary vegetable consumed by northern Ashkenazi Jews all the way until the arrival of the potato in the region in the 1800s, and even after that it remained a staple, whether boiled, braised, stewed, pickled, or put in soups or pastry fillings.

And, of course, there were cabbage noodles. Known as  káposztás tészta in Hungarian and kraut lokshn or kraut pletzlach in Yiddish, the combination of sautéed cabbage and egg noodles, sometimes with an onion thrown in for extra flavor, was common throughout Central Europe and Ukraine.

Sometimes topped with caraway (not so much my thing) or poppy seed (getting warmer), sometimes just served plain on its own (my preferred method, most of the time anyway), for my money cabbage noodles are unquestionably the most delicious way to enjoy this vegetable. I can’t say it’s the healthiest—even in my modified version, there’s a fair amount of oil (if you want to make it pareve) or butter (if you’re ready to go all out with the dairy), and more traditional versions have significantly more. It’s rich, it’s decadent, it’s not really the thing for everyday eating. But every once in a while—especially in winter—it really hits the spot.

My go-to version is slightly adapted from this recipe from the Wall Street Journal.

Cabbage Noodles

1 medium onion, thinly sliced

3 tablespoons butter or oil

1 ½ teaspoons salt

1 2-lb head green cabbage, core removed and leaves coarsely chopped

Black pepper, to taste

1 pound egg noodles or bowties, cooked according to package instructions

In a large sauté pan over medium-low heat, sweat onions with 1 tablespoon butter or oil and 1 ½ teaspoons salt until softened and slightly browned, about 15 minutes.

Add remaining butter or oil. Stir in cabbage and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 30-40 minutes. Season with pepper and additional salt to taste. Toss with cooked noodles. Serve warm.

Sources: Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (Gil Marks, 2010)

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