Why are cabbage rolls called that and who invented them? Culinary historians and etymologists have two suggestions that seem more plausible to me. The first is directly related to the shape of the cabbage roll, which actually looks a bit like the carcass of a bird (pigeon). And the second explains it as a borrowing distorted over time from the German word Kolblat - "cabbage leaf". There is no special mention of cabbage rolls in Russian cuisine until the beginning of the 19th century. Let's open the famous "Dictionary of Cooking, Helper, Candidate and Distiller" (1795-97) by Vasiliy Lebshin: in the "Russian Cooking" section there is no mention of cabbage rolls. But the famous culinary expert of the middle of the 19th century, Ekaterina Avdaeva, mentions this dish for the first time only in 1842, in the chapter "Various dishes that came into use among the Russians". So this dish came to us not long ago. And it was adopted, apparently, from different sources: from the southern Slavs, from the Poles, from Jewish towns and Ukrainian cities.

Why are cabbage rolls called that and who invented them? Culinary historians and etymologists have two suggestions that seem more plausible to me. The first is directly related to the shape of the cabbage roll, which actually looks a bit like the carcass of a bird (pigeon). And the second explains it as a borrowing distorted over time from the German word Kolblat - "cabbage leaf". There is no special mention of cabbage rolls in Russian cuisine until the beginning of the 19th century. Let's open the famous "Dictionary of Cooking, Helper, Candidate and Distiller" (1795-97) by Vasiliy Lebshin: in the "Russian Cooking" section there is no mention of cabbage rolls. But the famous culinary expert of the middle of the 19th century, Ekaterina Avdaeva, mentions this dish for the first time only in 1842, in the chapter "Various dishes that came into use among the Russians". So this dish came to us not long ago. And it was adopted, apparently, from different sources: from the southern Slavs, from the Poles, from Jewish towns and Ukrainian cities.