The initial odour was forgotten when a steaming platter of sauerkraut and smoked sausage was served on a cold day
As I drove past a wholesale vegetable outlet I noticed several pallets of cabbages waiting to be delivered to various grocery stores.
I remembered my mother looking out over the garden in fall and deciding that something had to be done with the few remaining cabbage heads before the first severe frost.
Out came the crock and grater. My mother got quite a workout while reducing the cabbages to thin slivers and then squeezing out the juice.
The cabbage required a certain amount of warmth to initiate fermentation, so for a few days each fall, the crock of potential sauerkraut was hidden behind the kitchen stove. Cabbage juice mysteriously frothing and bubbling of its own accord intrigued me, but if Mom was around, I lifted the lid at my peril, and never in the presence of Sunday visitors. If I did, the whole house reeked like an inefficient sewage lagoon and we would be stamped with the social stigma of it forever after.
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More sophisticated people were convinced that such a base smell could be appreciated only by those who lived by their lower nature.
Once the fermentation process was well under way, the juice from the sauerkraut often foamed up and over the top of the crock, and great care was taken to prevent the excess juice from seeping down through the floorboards, or into the wood box or under the stove or anywhere. If it did, the pervasive odour was about as difficult to dislodge as that of rotting road kill.
Thankfully, the fermentation process along with its repugnant odour eventually diminished, and the crock of sauerkraut came to rest in the far corner of the dugout cellar.
When the first skiff of snow arrived, it was taken out to the back porch, where freezing temperatures held the contents at just the proper degree of sourness.
With memories of that awful stench still vivid in my mind, however, I held my nose as I scooped long shreds of sauerkraut into the white enamel saucepan. But first impressions can be deceiving.
On a cold, wintry day when a heaping bowl of fluffy mashed potatoes and a steaming platter of sauerkraut and smoked sausage was set before me, I could not refrain from diving in.
So what if for one awful week each fall I could identify with the prophet Elisha’s dinner guests when they exclaimed, “O man of God, there is death in the pot.”
Sauerkraut just smells that way.
