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Sauce

To Cook Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut cooked with lard and flour, optionally seasoned with caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Cook Sauerkraut

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sauerkraut

  1. Squeeze the sauerkraut to remove brine.

  2. Wash the sauerkraut in cold water and drain.

  3. Place the sauerkraut in a porcelain-lined or earthen vessel and cover with cold water.

Cook and drain

  1. Boil for 2 hours.

  2. Pour into a colander and press out the water.

  3. Return the sauerkraut to the vessel.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. In a frying pan, heat the lard and flour until light brown.

  2. Mix the dressing thoroughly with the sauerkraut and serve.

  3. Add 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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Sauerkraut
Is the main ingredient, providing the dish's tangy, cooked-cabbage body.
Lard
Provides fat that carries flavor and helps form the dressing with the flour.
Flour
Browns with the lard to form a roux that thickens and gives the dressing body.

The step that matters

Heating the lard and flour until light brown. Browning the flour in fat builds a nutty roux; taking it too far scorches it and gives a bitter taste, while stopping too early leaves a raw floury flavor and weak thickening.

“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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