Chapter 13: Sour · THRIVING after the FALL

The Opening

Think of biting into a lemon.

Not eating one. Just the moment the teeth go through the skin and the juice hits the tongue. If you have done it properly, your mouth is already filling. You did not decide that. The body did it for you, at the mere thought, because the body has an opinion about sour and the opinion is: yes, more, get ready. Of the five things a tongue can taste, sour is the one that makes the mouth reach out.

There is a reason, and it is older than lemons. For most of the time our kind has been eating, a sour taste in a stored food was the sign that it was safe. Not the sign that it had gone off. The opposite. Milk that had turned sour would keep for days when sweet milk would not. Cabbage that had gone sour in its barrel would last the winter when fresh cabbage rotted in a fortnight. The sourness was the taste of something having happened in the dark, slowly, while nobody watched, and the something was on our side.

The opening of the chapter. It goes on in the book.

The Story

The bags again
The man who saw it
The starter is not the air
The skin on the wine
The crock on the windowsill
What the supermarket hid

2,862 words in the book.

At the Bench

Instruction follows. Weigh, do not measure. Temperatures in degrees Celsius. Where a range is given, the safer end is named. Brine strengths are as in the salt chapter.

1 Sauerkraut, the master recipe for every fermented vegetable Safety

The same method, adjusted, for everything else. Whole cucumbers, beans, carrots, beetroot, turnips and whole small onions cannot be squeezed, so they are covered instead with a brine of 35 to 50 grams of salt to the kilogram of vegetables and water together, as in the salt chapter, with dill, garlic, horseradish and a few oak, cherry or grape leaves for crispness. Cut a sliver off the blossom end of every …

6 steps · checked in R1

2 A rye starter from Berlin flour

You need dark rye flour, wholemeal or the German type 1150, and water that has not been chlorinated. Rain water, well water, or tap water left uncovered overnight. Berlin tap water is very hard and will slow the first days. Do not be alarmed.

6 steps · checked in R5

3 Cider vinegar in the Orléans manner Safety

8 steps · checked in R2

4 Sour milk, two ways Safety

Dickmilch, the northern way, no thermometer.

10 steps · checked in R3 R14

If it goes wrong

A white film or fur on the surface of the crock, or on the vinegar. A dry, wrinkled, white film that smells of yeast is kahm yeast, which is harmless: skim it, wipe the rim, make sure everything is under the brine, and carry on. Fur that is blue, green, black or pink, or fuzzy, is mould. A small patch caught early can be skimmed, the rim wiped and everything checked under the brine. If it is thick, fuzzy, pink …

The first lines of each protocol. The steps, weights and temperatures are in the book.

Numbers to Carry

22 grams of salt to the kilogram of cabbage for sauerkraut, dry-salted, never under 20 or over 30. 35 to 50 to the kilogram of vegetables and water together for whole pickles under brine. 93 114
18 to 22 degrees until clearly sour and still, two to four weeks, then the cellar The rule for every crock. 93
50 and 50, once a day, for fourteen days a rye starter from dark flour, then a hundred bacteria to every yeast for as long as you feed it. 90
5 in a hundred The acid a vinegar must reach to preserve, and the alcohol the cider must have to get there. 89
One to three spoonfuls per litre, never more Sour milk and yoghurt, from a culture that has been kept, not bought. 95
A dried spare, given to two neighbours The way a culture survives.

The Library

The research documents behind this chapter, all of them on the website: 93 Vegetable Lacto-Fermentation Process · 114 Traditional Fermented Pickle Recipe · 90 Sourdough Microbiology and Culture Stabilization · 91 Sourdough Microbiology and Yeast Isolation · 89 Acetobacter Vinegar Production Guide · 95 Traditional Heirloom Yogurt Making Guide · 109 Wood-Fired Sourdough Baking Guide.

The plates

Plate 13-01 A crock in the cellar with a stone on its lid. Nobody has looked inside for three weeks, and that is the whole method.

Plate 13-02 Pickles in the Spreewald. Cucumbers go into the barrels with salt and dill, as they have since the fourteenth century.

Plate 13-03 Sauerkraut going aboard for the Pacific in 1772. In three years at sea not one man was lost to scurvy.

Plate 13-04 Sauerkraut in four steps. Quarter and core, shred, knead with the salt until the juice runs, and ram it down into the crock.

Plate 13-05 The sauerkraut crock in section. The cabbage lies under its own juice, held down by two leaves, a board and a stone, with only a cloth over the top.

Plate 13-06 Whole cucumbers under brine with dill, garlic, horseradish and oak leaves. A sliver cut from the blossom end of each keeps them from going soft.

Plate 13-07 A rye starter's first fortnight. The early rise is false and the flat day is normal, and by the second week it rises on time.

Plate 13-08 The vinegar cask of Orléans. The mother floats undisturbed on top, new cider goes in underneath through a long funnel, and the vinegar comes out of the tap below.

Plate 13-09 Yoghurt kept warm in a box of hay. A crock bedded in hay or a featherbed holds its heat for the four to eight hours the milk needs.