Stefanie's Cabbage Rolls

Stefanie's cabbage rolls (written as the title — the recipe is credited to her in the name itself)

Ingredients

• white cabbage
• 30 lbs fresh ground sausage — ⚠ see Notes, this quantity is doubtful
• 5 lbs rice
• salt + pepper
• egg
• 2 large cans whole tomatos (spelled as written) — "(more or less)"
• Yoders sour crought 2–4 (sauerkraut, spelled as written)
• Ham Hocks 2–5
• 1 large can tomato sauce

Method

(written as a list of dashes, in this order)

Assembly - cut center of cabbage put in bottom of pan - set ham hocks on top - layer cabbage rolls and sour crought (she only said to put on top) - stoppe 5 in from top (spelled as written) - top with sour crought - fill water up to just ~~[a word is scribbled out here]~~ above rolls, sprinkle with salt

The fillings (written below the assembly, not before it) - mix sausage, rice, + salt and pepper - mix sour crought, chopped tomatos (juices too) and shredded cabbage together (and tomato sauce opt.)

Notes

⚠ The sausage quantity reads "30 lbs" and it does not fit the rest of the card. Five pounds of rice, two cans of tomatoes and two to five ham hocks is a large family batch, not a thirty-pound one. The digits are clearly written — this is not an illegibility problem — so it is transcribed exactly as it appears rather than quietly corrected to 3 lbs. Someone who cooked from this card should settle it before it is published. A wrong meat quantity is the kind of error that makes a recipe useless.

⚠ No cooking temperature, time or method is stated on the card — not whether it goes in the oven or on the stove, and not for how long. The writer knew. ⚠ not stated on the card.

⚠ The sauerkraut and ham-hock quantities are written as ranges ("2–4", "2–5") in a hand where those digits are not perfectly crisp. Read as ranges, which is consistent with a cook working to taste.

"(she only said to put on top)" is the most telling line on the card. The writer was taking this down from someone else — probably Stefanie — and noting where her own practice differed from the instruction she was given. That parenthesis is why this is a family document and not just a recipe.

Yoder's is a local Indiana sauerkraut brand; naming it suggests the card was written in northeast Indiana rather than carried in from elsewhere.

The sheet is a loose lined page, torn at the top edge, with old grease or liquid staining across it — a card that lived in a kitchen rather than a box.