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Sourkroui or Sauerkraut

Fermented cabbage preserved with salt, optionally flavored with bacon, dill, or caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Dill and caraway share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 47 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Sourkroui or Sauerkraut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and ferment

  1. Collect cabbage from the fields in autumn.

  2. Remove the stalks and cut the leaves into slices.

  3. Layer the sliced cabbage in a vat, alternating with layers of coarse sea salt.

  4. Fill the vessel and place heavy weights on top.

  5. Allow to ferment for six weeks, adjusting for temperature.

Cook

  1. To cook, stew the sauerkraut in its own liquid with bacon or pork.

  2. Add dill or caraway seeds if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Dill + carawaytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Cabbage + dilltop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together47 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Cabbage + carawaytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together60 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Cabbage + porktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together919 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pork + carawaytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together125 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Provides the base that ferments into sauerkraut, with its own sugars feeding the fermentation.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and keeps spoilage microbes in check while lactic acid bacteria ferment the cabbage.

The step that matters

Allow to ferment for six weeks, adjusting for temperature. Salt must be layered in enough to draw brine over the cabbage, and the cabbage must stay submerged under weights. Exposed leaves can spoil or mould. Temperature changes the fermentation rate, so the timing needs checking.

Swap the dill

The recipe marks dill as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pork, caraway):

  1. Dillthe original
  2. Celeryfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pork, caraway. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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