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Boiled Sauerkraut

A hearty boiled sauerkraut dish with brisket, potatoes, and caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Beef and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Boiled Sauerkraut

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the brisket

  1. Boil the brisket in a gallon of water with a little salt and soup greens until tender.

  2. Remove the meat, salt it well, and boil again in a porcelain-lined kettle after removing the bones.

Make the sauerkraut

  1. Add the soup stock and desired amount of sauerkraut, and boil for about one hour.

  2. Tie the caraway seeds in a bag and boil with the sauerkraut.

  3. Grate the raw potatoes and thicken the mixture, adding brown sugar just before serving.

  4. If not sour enough, add a dash of vinegar.

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. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Caraway + potatotop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together115 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-decenal (green, must).

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Potato + vinegartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,608 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Caraway + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Brisket of beef
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long simmering in water.
Sauerkraut
Supplies the sour flavour that defines the dish and is the base of the broth.
Raw potatoes
Grated into the liquid to thicken it as they cook.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sourness of the sauerkraut.
Caraway seeds
Adds an aromatic, earthy flavour to the sauerkraut.

The step that matters

Grating the raw potatoes into the mixture. Raw potato starch releases into the hot liquid and thickens it as it cooks. Adding it too late or too little leaves the sauce thin, so it should be grated and stirred in while the sauerkraut is still simmering.

Swap the caraway

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, potato, sugar, vinegar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, potato, sugar, vinegar. 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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