Last night I watched an episode of “No Reservations” where Bourdain meets a chef that makes his own kielbasa.  He serves it with a slaw/relish of sauerkraut and Granny Smith apple that he (the chef) refers to as “kapusta.”

This instantly caught my attention, as the sauerkraut soup I’ve made (that my mother has made, and my grandmother as well) is called “kapusta.”  Which led me to wonder — have we been calling it the wrong thing this whole time?

I have a cookbook of my grandmothers, “Treasured Polish Recipes for Americans,” which lists a sauerkraut soup as “kapusniak.”  So what’s what?

I did some searching around online and found that “kapusniak” and “kapusta” are essentially the same thing, recipe-wise.  The pronunciation changes regionally (as will the recipe).  “Kapusta” itself means, in slang, “cabbage” (and also means “money” in Polish slang).