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From Loathing to Love

As a child, and to be honest, until I left home for college, I was the pickiest eater ever in the entire world. And perhaps the one thing that I loathed most was cooked cabbage.

I was always a spoiled child, the younger of two, and a girl to boot. My brother went off to college when I was nine, so, for the most part I was an only child of parents who, at that point, were in their early 50s. If I didn’t like the food at dinner, which we ate in a dining room every night, my mother would make me a kosher bologna sandwich.

On weekends, my mother might make burgers (medium-well with very, very lean beef), chicken with orange marmalade, or roast chicken (no stuffing, no gravy). The only spice or herb in the kitchen was tinned paprika, the kind that had no flavor.

Everyone once in a while, my mother would make cabbage soup. My parents really liked it. It made me gag. I would go into my bedroom, close the door, and make gagging sounds, just to emphasize that point. I am not sure when I began to love it, but by the time my parents would come to visit me in Ithaca, New York, she would bring a casserole dish of stuffed cabbage.

Recently, in The New York Times Magazine, Sam Sifton wrote about a Swedish woman who, when pregnant, would make Kalpudding, which pretty much sounds like ground beef with cabbage, with lots of other ingredients, like molasses, ground pork, heavy cream, and stock. It sounded fabulous. Soon I will try the recipe, but, in the meantime I decided that I absolutely needed my mom’s stuffed cabbage, which she got from her best friend, Betty Lipsky. In case you need something old-fashioned and soothing, here it is for you.

Lee White of Old Lyme has been a food editor and restaurant reviewer for more than 25 years. You can email her at leeawhite@aol.com.

Pauline Aronson’s Stuffed Cabbage

1 large head of cabbage

Sauce

1 medium-sized can stewed tomatoes

1 medium-sized can regular tomatoes, broken up

1 medium onion, sliced

handful of raisins

juice of 1 lemon, or to taste

brown sugar, to taste

apricot preserves, to taste

Filling

2 pounds lean ground beef

½ medium or 1 small onion, grated

few drops of water

salt and pepper to taste

To make sauce:

Combine ingredients, bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes to half hour, adjusting lemon, brown sugar, and apricot preserves to taste.

To make filling:

Combine meat, onion, water, salt, and pepper and set aside.

Meanwhile, remove outer leaves of cabbage and cut out the core. Parboil cabbage until leaves are soft and pliable. Place soft leaves on paper towels. Take a big leaf (with hard part cut out) and wrap a ball of meat in it. Place seam side down in large pot or casserole dish. Continue until meat is gone. (You can stack rolls atop one another as long as pot is large enough to prevent crowding.) Pour sauce on top and bake in slow oven (300 to 325 degrees) for 2 hours.

This freezes beautifully, if there’s any left. I often double this recipe.