Article by media partner Cuisine Noir, the country’s first Black culinary lifestyle outlet since 2009 dedicated to connecting the African diaspora through food, drink and travel.
Over the centuries, cabbage has become an essential ingredient in African American cooking, especially soul food. Like many soul food dishes, the humble vegetable symbolizes survival and resourcefulness, and like collard greens, cabbage is also thought of as a symbol of wealth and prosperity for African American New Year’s traditions. But how did it get here?
Origins of Cabbage
Cabbage, known botanically as “brassica oleracea,” is one of the oldest vegetables in human history. Brassica describes cruciferous vegetables like cabbage, kale, mustard greens, Brussel sprouts and bok choy.
Cabbage originated in the Mediterranean more than 4,000 years ago. During the Middle Ages in France, cabbage was a staple food for the working classes and was often eaten in soups or stews.
“It was introduced into Africa in the 16th century by European colonists,” shares cookbook author Carolyn Quick Tillery. “Then a French explorer, Jaques Cartier, sowed cabbage seeds in Canada in 1541 and shortly thereafter brought it to the United States, where the first settlers of Jamestown introduced cabbage to Virginia.”
With the arrival of enslaved Africans to what is now the United States in 1619, cabbage became a staple of dishes cooked and cherished by African Americans.
Cabbage as Soul Food
Where European recipes often boiled cabbage, enslaved Black cooks developed the “low and slow” method of simmering it with meat to add flavor. “They added discarded meats like hog slaughtering scraps, such as fat back, hog jowls, ham hocks, neckbones and pigtails to add flavor to these cabbage dishes,” says Tillery, a former U.S. Air Force officer.
The creativity and ingenuity of taking throw-away food and making it a delicacy is the cornerstone of soul food cooking. In fact, enslaved cooks also perfected pot likker, the savory and vitamin-rich broth at the bottom of the pot. Many Black people today still like to sop their cornbread in it.
During enslavement, the cooks would make dishes like cabbage and pig tails, cabbage and neckbones and cabbage and pigs feet because of only getting the throw-away meats to cook with.
Today, cabbage is often made to go with soul food dishes like oxtails, fried chicken, fried pork chops, fried fish, fried turkey wings and even barbecued ribs. “I enjoy the fragrance when cabbage is cooking, the ease with which you can cook it, compared to collard greens. And I love the flavor of smothered cabbage and cornbread,” Tillery exclaims.
She continues, “Fried cabbage is usually cooked open in a frying pan until it’s soft and brown. Smothered cabbage, as I recall the way my grandmother made it, she would render the fat from either fatback or bacon and then sauté sliced onions and add the shredded cabbage and stir until it’s all coated with oil and starting to wilt and then she’d cover it tightly and cook it on low until the cabbage was done.”
By Kalin Thomas
