Zion’s FAMOUS Sour Beef Dinner

Each year, Zion serves a traditional sour beef dinner, complete with homemade potato dumplings, red cabbage, green beans, rolls, cake and coffee or tea. This dinner has been prepared for years by the Frauenverein, or ladies aid society, mostly without a recipe and dependent upon what they were taught by their mothers. Their mothers called it sauerbraten, but the German immigrants wanted to adopt the name to their new home and thus the name was translated to ‘sour beef’. The ladies work tirelessly for more than a week in preparation of this feast. “For the people that work on this dinner, it is a labor of love, it is perpetuating our heritage and our roots in the Baltimore community”, says Freddie Herbert, a Co-Chair of the dinner.