A different version of this essay appears in Festive Maryland Recipes: Holiday Traditions from the Old Line State.
Sauerkraut came to Baltimore with German (and later, Eastern European) immigrants, but it made the leap to the dinner tables of Baltimore’s other citizens, in particular alongside the Thanksgiving turkey.
Much has been written about this peculiar phenomenon, with a new flurry of articles and social media posts coming out each year.
In an Instagram post made by the catering company H3irloom Food Group, Chef Tonya Thomas posed proudly with a plate. “Thank you to all of our customers who ordered Chef Tonya’s sauerkraut to add to their holiday spread,” read the caption.
“No matter who you are and what your race, in Baltimore, sauerkraut is on the table at holidays,” Thomas told me. She can trace the sauerkraut tradition in her family back for generations, to well before the 20th century. When Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863, Germans were the largest group of immigrants in Baltimore, she noted.
In many places where sauerkraut is eaten, it is stewed with meat cuts or sausages for extra flavor. This was a good fit for Black home cooks’ practice of using every part of an animal, and Tonya’s grandmother cooked hers with pigtails. Tonya eventually began to flavor her own sauerkraut with smoked turkey instead of pork. More recently, she has flavored the sauerkraut with vegetable stock and spices instead of meat, to accommodate H3irloom’s vegan guests.
The formula for sauerkraut itself is so simple that only a handful of recipes appear in my Maryland cookbook collection. It’s also long been available for sale in prepared form.
In Elizabeth Ellicott Lea’s 1845 cookbook “Domestic Cookery,” the two recipes for sauerkraut are labeled as “cabbage,” suggesting that sauerkraut may have been the primary use for cabbage in her household.
The earliest Maryland recipe calling the dish by name is in the 1870 “Queen of the Kitchen,” by Mary Lloyd Tyson. Had Tyson wanted to, she could have purchased prepared sauerkraut at William Bodmann’s Pickling House and Vinegar Depot on Howard Street.
In 1886, the Baltimore County Union paper wrote that sauerkraut, “instead of being tabooed, as formerly, had become quite a favorite dish upon our most fashionable tables.”
Holiday sauerkraut could be found wherever German people had settled in Maryland. Ads in Frederick newspapers promoted Thanksgiving specials including oysters, cranberries, turkeys, and sauerkraut. A 1930 ad in the Hagerstown Daily Mail touted homemade mince meat and sauerkraut in late November.
Nobody knows just how or why sauerkraut became so cross-cultural in Baltimore in particular.
Christmastime ads for sauerkraut appeared in the Afro-American by 1916. In 1933, they printed a recipe to make your own at home.
Comments on social media posts about holiday sauerkraut vary between nostalgic enthusiasm and disgust. They also often reveal a variety of preparations served up in Baltimore, many of which are reflected in the Old Line Plate recipe database.
Theresa Young of Leondartown, St. Mary’s County, cooked sauerkraut with turkey neck bones. An old recipe manuscript from Hoffmanville in Baltimore County contains a recipe for “sower crout” cooked with noodles. Maryland’s Way included a recipe made with pork, and one with apples. Many other recipes call for both.
This Thanksgiving, I opted to make a hearty Polish-inspired mixture of kielbasa and apples, as shared in the 1974 “Loyola Recipes” cookbook by Sue Clark. Her name was too common to research. Entitled “Kapusta And Kilbash (Sauerkraut And Sausage),” it is her lone recipe in the cookbook.
Our beloved Krakus Deli closed last Spring, so we ventured a little further out by Bayview, where I got some sauerkraut and sausages at At The Polish Table. I stocked up on a few other essentials such as candy. I’ll always miss Krakus, but I’ll be back to At The Polish Table.
A resurgence in the popularity of fermented foods has brought Baltimore sauerkraut custom back to the forefront. In 2022, Baltimore Magazine reported on Krautfest, an annual celebration of all things sauerkraut held at Gertrude’s Restaurant. Owner-chef John Shields recalled it being a ubiquitous side-dish during his Baltimore youth, even in Italian neighbors’ households, served alongside ravioli and turkey on Thanksgiving. It would be bad luck not to eat “at least a tablespoon,” he told the magazine.
The wide adoption across ethnicities, races, and classes has given sauerkraut staying power on holiday tables. Acidic, fermented cabbage is a natural accompaniment to a succulent turkey, not to mention other rich holiday side dishes. Certainly “Francois,” a (presumably French) head waiter at the Belvedere hotel in 1921, agreed. He told the Baltimore Sun: “turkey without sauerkraut is like terrapin without champagne.”
Recipe:
- 1 package Clausons sauerkraut
- 3 slices bacon
- 1 Teaspoon salt
- 1 Cup water
- 1 tart apple
- .25 Cup brown sugar
- 1 Polish sausage
1 pkg. Clausons sauerkraut, drain but don’t rinse. Fry 3 slices of bacon till just done but not crisp. Put sauerkraut into large pan. Add 1 tsp. salt, 1 c. water the bacon fat and the bacon, crumbled. Mix all together till sauerkraut is well mixed with other ingredients. Add 1 tart apple, pared, peeled and sliced and 1/4 c. brown sugar, mix through. Cook for 1 hour. Add Polish sausage sliced into 3 in. chunks, mixing them. Cook 1 hour more. Watch for dryness adding a little water as needed.
Recipe from Loyola Recipes, Loyola Mothers’ Club, 1974.
