Soltz & Sauerkraut, Part 2

This brings us to soltz which is very hard to describe without inviting comparisons to things like head cheese (blyech!). One of the things about the foods that are traditional among many people is that they carry in them the histories and traditions of the people who made them. Much of traditional German cooking reflects the necessity of preserving foods by fermenting (sauerkraut), smoking (sausage) and pickling (soltz).

In addition to the usual cookbooks of the time (The Joy of Cooking and Fannie Farmer), my mother had two wonderful cookbooks — the original version of Putting Foods By which was the bible for the stuff that came out of Dad’s garden every year, and Food That Schmecks, which is now out on top of my refrigerator with Julia Child and Sarah Leah Chase, my culinary luminaries. Schmecks is a Pennsylvania Dutch word that means “tastes”, as in “has a LOT of taste”. Germans aren’t big on subtlety when it comes to food.

So anyway, Gram Werner made soltz on a regular basis and it never lasted long. On pleasant Sunday mornings after Mass her brothers, my Uncle Eddie and Uncle George — and occasionally Uncle Chris, would come to her house and we would sit on the front porch eating soltz sliced and served on rye bread from Meisel’s Bakery with hearty dark mustard and thick slices of onion. All washed down with Straub’s beer, of course. Straub’s beer is story unto itself and may make it into a future blog. Sometimes Uncle George brought limburger cheese to go with it but on those occasions he sat on the far end of the porch by himself.

When I got older Gram taught me to make soltz and, years later when I was living in Texas, I had a neighbor who had grown up in a small town outside of Munich. I made it once for him and he said it tasted exactly like the soltz his grandmother used to make. I had a hard time getting rid of him after that.

Traditionally soltz was made from the lower legs of pigs — the part below the hams — but Gram would use any kind of leg bone. When the men butchered deer during hunting season they always saved the legs for her, and threw in any other meaty scraps they had left over. These parts were skinned and cleaned and the excess fatty parts cut away (not an issue with venison). All were placed in a huge kettle and just covered with water and simmered until the meat was falling off the bones. Gram would remove the bones and gristle and dispose of those and then put the meat aside while the remaining liquid cooled so she could skim off the fat. Originally she put the meat through a grinder but my Dad liked it better when the meat wasn’t ground so fine so she would chop it into small pieces. She sometimes added other cooked meat to this — leftover pork loins and roasts. Once she even chopped up the leftovers from a turkey and put them in.

The liquid was measured and an equal amount of cider vinegar was added to it along with finely chopped onions and lots of black pepper. When this was bubbling she added the meat, let it all come to boil and then ladled it into loaf pans lined with wax paper and set it to chill. When it was cold the liquid jelled up and made a spicy, tangy treat.

Once in a little Amish store in Adams County I saw loaves of soltz that had been decorated by making patterns from slivers of carrots and pickles in the bottom of the pan before the meat was ladled in. When it set and was turned out there was a pretty pattern on top — chust for nice.

I don’t know if people today care about these things anymore but it is nice to remember what an event the making of soltz was when I was a girl, and to preserve the memory of it. Preserving — it’s a German thing.

Thanks for reading.