Sauerkraut
INGREDIENTS for dish for 6 persons.-2 lbs. of sauerkraut, 2 oz. each of lard, suet and butter, potato, grated, juniper berries, caraway seeds, salt.
Melt the lard, suet and butter in a stewpan, with a little water and a very little SAUERKRAUT. salt, and a few juniper berries and carasauerkraut, cover closely and boil for 1½ Note. Tous-les-mois is a superior kind of way seeds tied in a bag; then add the arrowroot.
SAUSAGE-MEAT, FRIED.
SAUSAGES, FRIED. hour. Before serving, thicken with either paste, and fold it over the meat; slightly grated potato or peas.
TIME.-1½ hour.
SEASONABLE in autumn and winter.
Note. Sauerkraut can be bought ready for use in England in small barrels. It is cabbage cut fine, pressed into clean barrels with salt, and allowed to ferment, with a cloth dipped in a solution of spices tied over the top of the barrel.
A plain German-style braised sauerkraut, built on bought barrel kraut rather than a home ferment. The essential move is a long, gentle simmer in fat with the spices confined to a bag so they flavour without being eaten.
- The hinge: low and slowSauerkraut braised hard turns grey and sour-sharp; kept at a bare simmer, covered, for an hour to an hour and a half it mellows and sweetens. Add water only as needed to keep the pan from drying.
- Rinse or notModern packaged kraut, particularly the pasteurised jarred kind, varies enormously in salt. Taste it first; if aggressively salty, rinse briefly and drain, and add no salt at all to the fat.
- The fats2 oz is about 55 g of each. Beef suet is now a specialist purchase and lard is sold rendered in blocks; 6 oz (170 g) of fat in total for 2 lb of kraut is authentic but rich, and cutting it to 3 oz still works. Bacon fat or a piece of smoked pork belly is a common modern substitute, though this recipe calls for no smoked meat.
- Spice bagJuniper berries and caraway seeds go in tied in muslin so they can be lifted out. Six to eight lightly crushed juniper berries and a teaspoon of caraway suit 2 lb of kraut.
- Grated potato as thickenerA raw potato grated in at the end binds the liquor as its starch swells; stir it so it does not sit in lumps and give it a few minutes to cook through. The alternative given, peas, may mean whole peas, which will change the dish more than they thicken it, or a pea flour or purée, which would thicken.
- VesselA "stewpan" here is a heavy lidded saucepan or small casserole on the hob, not an oven dish. Anything non-reactive is best, as sauerkraut's acid will pick up metallic flavours from bare cast iron or aluminium.
- Yield and servingServes six as a side. It is a partner for boiled or roast pork, frankfurters, smoked sausage or a piece of gammon, and it reheats better the next day.
Sauerkraut is salt-fermented shredded cabbage, the name simply German for "sour cabbage", and the technique of preserving greens in brine is very old and very widespread across northern and central Europe. The note that it could be bought "ready for use in England in small barrels", from an entry whose house style is generally taken to indicate Beeton, though the page itself does not say so, suggests a foreign dish being handled at arm's length.