Cook 2 pounds of fresh pork; season with salt and pepper; add 2 bay-leaves and a few cloves. When half done, add 1 quart of sauerkraut and let cook one hour. Add 1 cup of wine and 1 tablespoonful of brown sugar. Let all cook until tender. Serve with potato dumplings.
A one-pot Bavarian braise written in the shorthand of a cook who already knew what it should look like. The main thing the text leaves out is liquid, and that is the point to settle before you start.
- Add liquid from the startThe recipe never says to add water or stock, but 2 pounds of pork will scorch in a dry pan long before it is half done. Brown the meat, then braise it in about a cup of water or light stock, covered, so there is always a little liquid in the pot.
- "Fresh pork" means uncuredAt the time this distinguished the meat from salt pork, ham or bacon. Use boneless pork shoulder cut into large chunks; loin or chops will be dry by the time the kraut has had its hour.
- Half doneFor shoulder, that is roughly 45 minutes to an hour of gentle simmering. Then the sauerkraut goes in for its hour, giving about two hours total. The pork wants an internal temperature near 190F so it pulls apart, not the 145F you would aim for with a chop.
- A quart of sauerkrautAbout 1 1/2 lb drained, or a standard large jar. Taste it first: modern packaged kraut varies from mild to fiercely sour and salty. Rinse it if it is sharp, and hold back on salting the pork until you have tasted the finished pot.
- Cloves and bay"A few cloves" means whole cloves, three or four. They are assertive in a closed pot for two hours; more than that and the dish tastes of clove and nothing else. Tie them and the bay in cheesecloth if you would rather not fish them out.
- The wineA dry white, Riesling or Silvaner in keeping with the region, rather than red. It goes in late, with the brown sugar, so it keeps some brightness and balances the acid of the kraut.
- YieldFour generous servings with potato dumplings, or five or six if you round out the plate with bread and mustard. It reheats better than it eats the first day.
Sauerkraut braised with pork is the everyday winter dinner of Bavaria and much of central Europe, built on the two things a household could reliably keep through cold months: a barrel of cabbage fermented in salt, and a pig killed in late autumn. The pairing is practical chemistry as much as tradition, since the acid of the kraut cuts the fat of the pork and helps break down a tough shoulder cut. The touch of sugar and the glass of wine might be read as marking a slightly dressed-up version, though sweetening kraut is common in plain country cooking too. Its appearance here, on November 19 in a book that walks a cook through a year of dishes from different countries, may owe something to the large German-speaking presence in American cities, where Bavarian food was familiar enough to need no explanation and the compiler could place potato dumplings alongside it without a word about how to make them.