Grandma’s Sweet Cabbage Borscht

My grandmother had multiple cabbage borscht recipes, and she made more than one version regularly. They primarily differ in terms of how sweet vs. sour they are, which reflects a fairly well characterized phenomenon: the Ashkenazi culinary palette used to vary based on geographic area of origin, but after the incredible upheaval of the 20th century, Jewish families are often comprised of members of the tribe hailing from culinary traditions even within a given subset of Jewry. The rule of thumb is that as you move northward through Eastern Europe, Jewish cooking traditionally became less sweet and more sour. Some of this had to do with the climate - there is also more pickled food as you go northward so as to keep over the long winters, and pickled foods are typically sour. This recipe is somewhat unintelligible because it’s actually one index card with the original barely legible version taped to one side and a much more legible partial transcription written on the back of the index card. As a result, the recipe is lacking some of the ingredients and the directions are confusing.