The sauerkraut of Captain Cook

Scurvy is a disease related to the lack of vitamin C. It was killing 50% or more of crews on long-haul trips. Vitamin C is needed for building the connective tissues of the human body. Vitamin C is found in citrus fruits and in some vegetables such as tomatoes and potatoes. Cooking destroys vitamin C. After a month without vitamine C, scurvy starts with weakness and sores on arms and legs leading to gum disease and bleeding and finally death from infection or bleeding. The benefit of citrus fruits to prevent and cure scurvy was known at the time of Vasco de Gama expeditions in 1497. Jacques Cartier exploring the Saint Laurent river in 1536 saved his crew from scurvy by using a tea from needles of thuja trees following indigene knowledge. James Lind, a ship surgeon in the Royal Navy conducted a clinical trial in 1735, using 5 different treatments on affected crew members and proved the effectiveness of citrus to cure the disease. Yet, this did not resolve the problem of scurvy as fresh citrus fruits could not be kept for loing periods. The practice was to boil lemon juice and keep it onboard in cupper recipients, both practices destroying vitamine C.

Sauerkraut is the result of the fermentation of cabbage by various lactic acid bacteria. It is the most ancient and most known fermented food. Lactic fermentation occurs when cabbage is finely shredded, mixed with salt and put tightly in a jar. The lactobacilli, present in the air are deposited on cabbage leaves during it growth. The full fermentation takes a couple of weeks for completion. Fully cured sauerkraut can be kept at room temperature for many months, without refrigeration of pasteurisation for its conservation. The fermentation process increases the amount of vitamin C, making sauerkraut a very good source of vitamin C for long voyage at sea as it can be kept for extended periods.

James Cook was very concerned about the health of his crew. Upon embarking on his first circumnavigation, he loaded all anti scorbic foods thought to be effective at the time, including close to 4 tonnes of sauerkraut. None of his crew members died of scurvy during the three year navigation. But he experienced difficulties at first in convincing his crew to include a portion of sauerkraut in their daily diet:

The sour Kraut the men at first would not eat until I put in practice a method I never once knew to fail with seamen, and this was to have some of it dress'd every day for the Cabbin table and permitted all the officers to make use of it. The moment they see their superiors set a value upon it, it becomes the finest stuff in the world and the inventer of an honest fellow.

James Cook's journal, Tahiti, Thursday 13 April 1769