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Sourcrout with Pork and Sausages
Wash well three pints of sourcrout in several waters, drain and put it into a saucepan with a large piece of well-washed salt pork, two carrots, three smoked sausages, two whole onions, one whole breakfast cupful of roast meat fat, half a dozen juniper berries, one wineglassful of white wine and one pint of white broth. Let it cook slowly for three hours; drain the sourcrout and dish it up with the pork on top; the pork may either be served in one piece or divided into five or six slices, arranging the sausages around.
This is choucroute garnie under an anglicized name, and it behaves like any long braise: low heat, tight lid, and enough liquid to keep the kraut from scorching. The proportions of fat and salt belong to 1896 and are the main thing worth adjusting.
- Three pints of sourcroutRoughly 6 cups, or a 2 lb bag or jar of sauerkraut, drained. Barrel kraut of the period was far saltier and sourer than modern packaged kraut, which is why it is washed in several waters; with today's product one rinse and a good squeeze is enough, and skipping the rinse entirely gives a sharper dish.},
- A breakfast cupful of roast meat fatA breakfast cupful -- a generous cup, reckoned anywhere from 8 to 10 fl oz -- of dripping. Combined with salt pork and smoked sausage this is far more fat than a modern palate wants; 3 to 4 tablespoons of duck fat, lard or beef dripping will carry the same flavor. The kraut is drained before serving, so much of it was meant to be poured away.
- White broth and wineglassWhite broth is a light stock, veal or chicken, not browned. A wineglassful in period American receipts is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though 4 is also found, so a scant quarter to half cup of dry white wine — Alsatian Riesling or Sylvaner is the traditional choice.
- Salt porkA "large piece" means about 1 to 1.5 lb of slab salt pork or unsmoked streaky bacon. Soak it an hour in cold water, or blanch it five minutes and discard the water, or the finished dish will be inedibly salty.
- Smoked sausagesCoarse smoked links: kielbasa, Montbéliard, or good garlic sausage. Fully cooked sausages will fall apart over three hours — add them in the last 30 to 40 minutes and simmer just to heat through.
- Juniper berriesSix berries, lightly crushed, are the signature of the dish rather than a garnish. Tie them in cheesecloth with a bay leaf and a few peppercorns so they can be pulled out before serving.
- Heat and vessel"Slowly" means a bare simmer. The recipe calls only for a saucepan and does not mention a cover or an oven, but a covered heavy pot in a low oven holds a steadier heat than a burner. Check once an hour and add a splash of stock if the kraut looks dry.
- The vegetablesThe carrots and whole onions are aromatics, not a garnish. They will be collapsed and gray after three hours — discard them, or slice the carrots and tuck them alongside if you dislike waste.
- YieldServes five or six, judging by the direction to cut the pork into that many slices. Boiled potatoes and strong mustard are the standard accompaniments and make it a full meal.
Oscar Tschirky's "sourcrout" is an anglicized spelling of the German Sauerkraut, and the dish itself is the Alsatian choucroute garnie — cabbage fermented in salt, then braised in wine and fat with whatever salted and smoked pork the house had, and crowned with the meats at table. Juniper is the tell: it appears repeatedly in Alsatian and German kraut cookery. The recipe's presence in a New York hotel book of 1896 is unremarkable for its time. Tschirky himself was Swiss, and the city's dining rooms served a clientele that expected Central European food alongside the French repertoire. What marks it as period cooking is the whole breakfast cupful of roast-meat fat, taken from the drippings pan as a matter of course in a kitchen that roasted meat all day and had no reason to think of fat as something to be measured sparingly.