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A cabbage roll is a dish consisting of cooked cabbage leaves wrapped around a variety of stuffing. It is common to the cuisines of Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Southeastern Europe and much of Western Asia, Northern China, as well as parts of North Africa. Meat fillings are traditional in Europe, and include beef, lamb, or pork seasoned with garlic, onion, and . Cereal such as rice and barley, edible mushroom, and are often included as well. Fermented cabbage leaves are used for wrapping, particularly in southeastern Europe. In Asia, seafoods, tofu, and shiitake mushrooms may also be used. Chinese cabbage is often used as a wrapping.
Cabbage leaves are stuffed with the filling which are then baking, simmering, or steaming in a covered pot and generally eaten warm, often accompanied with a sauce. The sauce varies widely by cuisine. In Sweden and Finland, stuffed cabbage is served with lingonberry jam, which is both sweet and tart. In Central and Eastern Europe, tomato-based sauces and sour cream are typical. In Lebanon, the cabbage is stuffed with rice and minced meat and only rolled to the size of a cigar. It is usually served with a side dish of yogurt and a type of lemon and olive oil vinaigrette seasoned with garlic and dried mint.
The cabbage roll is a staple in the Romanian cuisine with variations of the recipe and sizing depending on the region, typically taking up to 6 hours to cook. Traditionally made with pork, beef, bacon, rice, spices and aromatics, the cabbage rolls are broiled in a tomato sauce and served with polenta, sour cream and spicy pickled peppers.
Cooking textbook author Nancy Krcek stated that the origins are unclear and that it is possible multiple groups of people invented it at the same time. Another cooking book author Malgorzata Caprari stated it is believed that credit is owed to the poorer inhabitants of Central and Eastern European countries. Due to the widespread cultivation of cabbage in these regions, it is likely that the cultures who inhabited them were the original inventors of this dish.
Cabbage rolls have found their way into popular culture, becoming one of the most recognizable dishes in Central and Eastern European cuisine. They often appear in literature and films as a symbol of homey comfort and tradition.
A version called holishkes is traditionally eaten by Jews on Simchat Torah. Recipes vary depending on region; northern Poles prefer a savory sauce, while Galicia, Hungary and Ukraine favor sweet-and-sour, for example.
In Asia, cabbage rolls have been adapted into various regional cuisines. In China, they are sometimes prepared with a filling of minced pork, shrimp, and vegetables, seasoned with soy sauce, ginger, and sesame oil, then steamed or simmered in a light broth. A similar dish exists in Japan, known as "ロールキャベツ" (rōru kyabetsu), often stuffed with ground meat and simmered in a tomato-based or dashi broth, reflecting the country's culinary influences.
There are lots of regional variations: in Kárpátalja and Nyírség, for example, they make pinky-sized töltött káposzta for weddings.
Although the rolling up of cabbages was first mentioned in the book of Miklós Tótfalusi Kis (in 1695), a similar dish, the káposztás hús, was known long before it. (not to be confused with Székelykáposzta)
The Káposztás hús was hugely popular. This traditional cabbage stew had a special significance to Hungarians people. The 17th-century manuscript cookbook of the Csáktornya court, written sometime before 1662, begins its list of dishes with the phrase "The cabbage meat is the coat of arms of Hungary". "In the old days, there was no dish more suitable for Hungarians than cabbage", said Péter Apor, praising it as the meal of the lords. Matthias Bel around 1730 also calls "Cabbage with bacon, the coat of arms of Hungary". Lippay also calls it the "coat of arms of Hungary" and states that Hungarians people can't live without it. Kelemen Mikes when traveling to Turkey also writes back, "The beautifully written letter pleases the mind, as does these cabbages with dill and sour cream". Mikes also finds it fitting for a coat of arms: "Even if I had no other praise to say about it, is it not enough to say that it is the coat of arms?"
But the cabbage roll itself also appears as a motif in the culture. In the renowned writer Zsigmond Móricz's short story "Tragedy", the protagonist János Kis dies while eating stuffed cabbage (of which he had vowed to eat fifty).
The cabbage rolls are called gołąbki in Polish, holubky by Czechs and Slovaks, or sarma / сарма by Serbs, Croatians and Bulgarians. The sauce is often the main difference in regional variations. In a less popular version called leniwe gołąbki (lazy cabbage rolls) the ingredients are chopped, combined and baked or fried.
In Left Bank Ukraine and in the south, holubtsi are usually big, made from the entire cabbage leaf, while in the Dniester region and the Carpathians the cabbage leaf is divided into several pieces. In the latter regions, cooks who made large holubtsi were considered lazy. In Poltava cooks preferred the large holubtsi because they were juicier. In most of Ukraine holubtsi were an everyday dish, but in most of Right Bank Ukraine, with the exception of Polissia, they were also included in holiday meals. Beginning in the 1920s, holubtsi began to be stuffed with a rice-meat mixture, and, instead of kvas, they began to be cooked in tomato juice, sauce or paste. This is the most common way they are prepared nowadays.
Holubtsi are a popular dish for both everyday meal and as special occasion treat. For Sviata Vecheria (Christmas Eve Supper) in many regions of Ukraine holubtsi constitute one of the twelve traditional dishes served on the night. Only Lenten ingredients are used in this case.Yakovenko, Svitlana 2016, Ukrainian Christmas Eve Supper: Traditional village recipes for Sviata Vecheria , Sova Books, SydneyFaryna, Natalka (Ed.) 1976, Ukrainian Canadiana, Ukrainian Women's Association of Canada, Edmonton On occasion of Sviata Vecheria, Boykos and Transcarpathians make Holubtsi from "kryzhavky" (pickled whole heads of cabbage). Into these "pickled" holubtsi they put a stuffing of rice and mushrooms. Carpathian-style holubtsi are usually made from fresh cabbage and stuffed with corn grits, or with grated raw potato (Vorokhta, Verkhovyna, Kvasy). These are best served with mushroom gravy. To differentiate the different types of holubtsi, they are wrapped into different shapes: corn-filled ones are made into the shape of envelopes, with the edges folded in, potato-filled are simply rolled up. A classic Halychian (Galician) Sviata Vecheria dish is holubtsi stuffed with grated potato and served with a mushroom machanka (dipping sauce).
On May 4, 2023, the cooking of holubtsi, a Ukrainian traditional dish, was inscribed in the National Inventory of Elements of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Ukraine.
There is an easier-to-make variation of that dish called lenivye golubtsy (e.g. "lazy" cabbage rolls): the cabbage is chopped and mixed with Ground meat and rice so there is no need to wrap every meatball in a cabbage leaf. The ultimate Russian comfort food , October 28, 2009, Russia Beyond the Headlinese
As for the bell pepper variant the dish, the Russians refer to it as "perchiki" ("little peppers", even though bell peppers are big among peppers)
In 1709, after losing the Battle of Poltava, the wounded Charles XII of Sweden and the remnants of his army escaped with their Cossacks allies to the Ottoman Empire town of Bender, in present-day Moldavia, where they were granted refuge by Sultan Ahmed III. Charles XII spent more than five years in the Ottoman Empire, trying to convince the Sultan to help him defeat the Russians. When he finally returned to Sweden in 1715, he was followed by his Ottoman creditors and their cooks. The creditors remained in Sweden at least until 1732; it is generally believed that Ottoman style dolma were introduced into Swedish cooking during this period.
As indicated by the name, Swedish kåldolmar are generally considered a variety of the dolma. Swedish is the only European language to use the Turkish term dolma ("filled") to denote cabbage rolls.
The earliest known Swedish recipe for "Dolma" is in the 1765 edition of the famous cookbook of Cajsa Warg. Warg instructed her readers to prepare the rolls using vine leaves, lamb, rice, and lemon juice. Toward the end of the recipe, however, Warg suggested that those who could not afford vine leaves could use preboiled cabbage leaves in their place. Nowadays, frozen kåldolmar, cooked with preboiled cabbage leaves, are sold in most major food stores in Sweden.
To cherish early modern cultural interchange between Sweden and the Orient, the Cabbage Dolma Day (Kåldolmens dag) is celebrated on November 30, the day Charles XII was killed during a military campaign in Norway. The celebrations were instated in 2010 by a group known as the Friends of the Cabbage Dolma (Kåldolmens vänner). In a series of media appearances, historian Petter Hellström explained that the group wanted to make November 30 a day to remember and ponder the multifaceted roots of Sweden's cultural heritage, apparently in contrast to the same day's long history as the unofficial marching day of Swedish fascism and right wing extremism. Starting in 2013, the Cabbage Dolma Day was hosted by the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, the country's foremost historical museum. The celebrations have also been supported by a number of important civil society organizations over the years, notably the Church of Sweden and the Federation of Local History and Folk Culture (Sveriges hembygdsförbund).
Cabbage rolls also feature prominently in the cuisines of Cajuns and Louisiana Creoles of southern Louisiana, where they usually take the form of ground pork mixed with rice and chopped vegetables stuffed into parboiled cabbage leaves and cooked in a tomato sauce-based liquid.
Romani Americans, Hungarian Americans, Chinese Americans and Vietnamese Americans often cook cabbage rolls.
Romani people in the United States eat sarmi which is made with cabbage leaves stuffed with pork, onions, peppers, rice, and tomatoes.
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