Sauer Kraut
There are few things more wholesome than the salted cabbage which is called sauer kraut. It will keep in good condition for a long time; but English people do not seem to care enough about it to take the trouble of making it, and those who delight in it are content to buy it ready-made from the Italian warehouse. For the best go to Lingner's, Old Compton Street, Soho, and Fenchurch Street, City.
Take two pounds of it, and simmer it gently for three or four hours in water. Drain off the water and toss it over the fire in some fat broth of good flavour. Serve Sauter-Sauté it with sausages-Frankfort the best; or serve it with streaky bacon. It is sometimes brazed with a duck, and makes an excellent garnish.
The
This is a recipe for cooking bought sauerkraut rather than making it, which is how most Victorian London cooks encountered the stuff. The method is sound; only the timings and the shopping directions need adjusting.
- The hinge: don't boil the flavour outSimmering two pounds of kraut in plain water for three or four hours was aimed at the fiercely salted, coarse barrel kraut sold by the pound. Modern jarred or bagged sauerkraut is milder and already tender; a rinse and a drain, then 45 minutes to an hour braising in stock, gives you something with texture left.
- "Fat broth of good flavour"Meaning a rich, unskimmed stock — ideally the cooking liquor from pork or goose. A good chicken or pork stock with a spoonful of duck fat or lard stirred in does the same job. The fat is not optional; it is what carries the sourness.
- "Brazed"An older spelling of braised. The duck is set on a bed of the kraut in a covered pot and cooked slowly so the fat renders down into it.
- "Sauter-Sauté"A doubling that looks like a transcription artefact rather than anything the reader was meant to act on; read it simply as instructions to toss the drained kraut in the fat over heat before serving.
- The Italian warehouseA Victorian delicatessen selling imported preserved goods — oils, cheeses, salted and pickled things. Lingner's of Old Compton Street is long gone; any German or Polish grocer, or the refrigerated section of a supermarket, is the equivalent. Buy refrigerated kraut rather than the pasteurised shelf-stable kind if you have the choice.
- Frankfort sausagesFrankfurters in the original sense: fine-textured smoked pork sausages, poached rather than grilled. Drop them into the finished kraut for the last ten minutes and keep the pan below a simmer, or the skins split.
- QuantityTwo pounds of kraut, with sausages or bacon, feeds four to six as a main course, rather more as the garnish the text mentions at the end.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877), generally attributed to the journalist E. S. Dallas and named for Auguste Kettner's Soho restaurant, is a dictionary of dishes written for a London readership that was curious about continental cooking but not always willing to do the work. The entry is candid about this: sauerkraut was admired in principle, imported in practice, and bought from the Italian warehousemen of Soho who supplied the capital with everything foreign and preserved. The dish itself is Central European sal, fermented white cabbage, kept through the winter for its keeping quality as much as its taste d the treatments listed here, with frankfurters, with streaky bacon, braised beneath a duck, are the standard garnitures of Alsatian and German cookery, familiar from the Alsatian choucroute garnie. The insistence that it is "wholesome" is worth noting: the nineteenth century valued fermented cabbage as an anti-scorbutic long before anyone could explain why it worked.