No. 1811

Suckling Pig, Salted and Smoked with Sauerkraut

Cochon de Lait Sale et Fume a la Choucroute

Empty and scald a suckling pig and keep it for ten days in plenty of brine containing four ounces of sage, four ounces of thyme, and half an ounce of bay leaf; drain dry and smoke it to a yellow color with sawdust into which mix a little sage. Boil the pig in water a quarter of an hour for every pound, dress when well drained on a bed of sauerkraut (No. 2819); garnish with the bacon, sausages, sliced carrots, and Chipolata sausages. A very rich clear gravy (No. 404) is to be served separately.

← No. 1810 Suckling Pig, Roasted on the Spit, or Stuffe Pork No. 1812 Tenderloin of Pork a la Minute—Minced →

For the Modern Kitchen Do not make this as written.

This is a curing and cold-smoking procedure dressed up as a dinner dish, and the curing half of it cannot be reproduced safely from the text. The specific problems are below.

The brine has no measurementsThe brine's salt strength is unmeasured -- the herbs are given in ounces, but "plenty of brine" gives no salt concentration, and the herbs listed contribute no meaningful preservative effect. Curing safety depends on a measured salt percentage relative to the weight of the meat and the volume of liquid; without it there is no way to know whether the pig is being preserved or simply sitting wet for ten days.
No curing salt, no temperatureNineteenth-century brine tubs relied on saltpetre and a cold cellar, neither of which is specified here. Ten days of immersion at an unstated temperature, in an unstated salt strength, is exactly the window in which Clostridium botulinum and Staphylococcus aureus multiply in cured pork.
A whole carcass cures unevenlyEven a suckling pig is a bone-in whole animal with thick shoulders and a deep body cavity. Immersion brining alone may not carry salt reliably to the interior in ten days, so the deepest muscle risks being the least protected point throughout the cure and the smoke.
Smoking "to a yellow color" is cold smokingSmoking "to a yellow color" with sawdust is presumably done well below cooking temperature -- the recipe gives no temperature at all -- which means the meat may be held for hours warm enough for bacterial growth. Cold smoking is a preservation step that only works on properly cured meat; applied to an under-cured carcass, it is an incubation period with a pleasant smell.
The final boil does not undo the riskFifteen minutes to the pound will certainly cook the pig through, and heat does destroy botulinum toxin. It does not destroy staphylococcal enterotoxin, which survives boiling and is the specific hazard of salted meat held warm and unrefrigerated.
If you want the dishChoucroute garnie built on commercially cured and smoked pork, sausages and sauerkraut is a straightforward modern dish. Use a current recipe and buy the cured pork rather than making it.
The cross-referencesNo. 2819 is Ranhofer's sauerkraut; No. 404 is the gravy the recipe calls "a very rich clear gravy." Chipolata here means a small thin sausage, distinct from the "bacon and sausages" also listed in the garnish.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) is Charles Ranhofer's summing-up of some thirty years as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it reads less like a household book than like a working brigade's reference file, which is why so many entries are a paragraph of shorthand pointing at three numbered recipes elsewhere. This one is a grand-restaurant reading of choucroute garnie, the Alsatian and German dish of sauerkraut buried under an assortment of cured pork; the usual version is built from smoked shoulder, bacon and sausages, and Ranhofer's conceit is to replace the assortment with a single whole suckling pig that has been salted and smoked entire, then boiled and set on the kraut as a centrepiece.