This was cooked as the meat-category entry in the Feuerprobe / Trial by Fire 2019 competition at Festival of Elvegast 2019.
The Source
The meat recipe itself is Rumpolt’s Schweinen 24, which simply says:
“Nim den Ruckbraten / vnd brat jn / vnd wenn er gebraten ist / so thu jn in ein Mandel oder Epffelgescharb / oder in angemachte Zwibeln / so ist er lieblich zu essen.”
“Take the back roast / and roast it / and when it is roasted / then put it in an almond or apple gescharb (sauce) / or in prepared onions / then it is lovely to eat.”
Rumpolt assumes you know how to make “prepared onions.” He elaborates the gescharb sauce more fully elsewhere — most usefully in Ganß 12 (a goose recipe), which gives the actual method:
“Take the onions / peel and cut them wide / and very thin / put them in butter / and sweat them well / that they yet do not burn / also are not made brown / put a little flour in it / and stir well / and if there is too much butter in it / then pour it off / and pour a good beef broth / that is well tasting / in it / mix it with ground pepper / so it becomes ash colored from the pepper. Put a little black raisins / that are washed off clean / into it / and let it cook with the onions / that it is nicely thick / like this it will be good / well tasting / and nicely sweet from onions. You may make it sour / or leave it thus / however without vinegar is better. And when you dress the roasted goose / then put the gescharb sauce under it / because such gescharb sauce is good to give with many roasts.”
Two more Rumpolt entries — Murmentel 3 (marmot) and Küniglein 5 (rabbit) — give related gescharb variants with apple, almond, saffron, vinegar, and browned flour, between them spelling out the full range of options for the sauce.
Discussion
The lovely thing about cooking from Rumpolt is that when one recipe assumes you know how to make a sub-component, there are usually several others elsewhere in the book that spell it out. Schweinen 24 leaves “prepared onions” undefined; Ganß 12, Murmentel 3, and Küniglein 5 between them give more complete instructions. Gescharb itself is a German word meaning pottery bowl (Bach 182). Across the four recipes, the consistent components are onions cooked in butter, optionally browned; optional apples or almonds; raisins; broth; optional flour as thickener; and optional spices and vinegar. That gives the cook latitude to shape the sauce around whichever meat it will finish, the tastes of the diners, and balance with other dishes being served.
I built the sauce on deeply browned onions and raisins, omitted the apple and almond, thickened with browned flour, and used only a small amount of vinegar to counterbalance the sweetness. The browning of the onions is the defining choice — Ganß 12 cautions against letting them brown, but the deeply-browned option from Murmentel 3 produces a much more interesting sauce for a fattier meat like pork. The Ganß 12 instruction reads more naturally for the leaner birds it accompanies, where you don’t want the caramelized depth competing with the meat.
The thickener deserves its own note. The German term is “eyngebrennt” or “eingebrennt” — literally “baked flour” in modern German — and is a roux precursor still used in modern German and Jewish cooking under the name einbrenn. Flour is deeply browned in a dry pan, without fat, often in larger batches than needed and stored for later use. It gives a nutty flavor and roughly half the thickening power of a fat-cooked light roux. The result has a different mouthfeel than a true roux: less silky, more like a clean broth thickened to gravy weight, with a roasted-grain undertone that pairs well with the onions.
For the meat itself, I followed Rumpolt’s standing instruction to salt and add garlic to the roast the night before — an early marinade pattern that appears in several places in the book — and roasted to internal temperature 150°F over hardwood charcoal. The meat is then cut into bite-size pieces and finished by simmering in the sauce until it reaches 165–170°F. This is a standard method for marrying a roast meat into a finishing sauce, and it solves the practical problem of holding the meat hot for service.
Schweinen en Zwibelgescharb — Roast Pork in Onion Sauce
Pork shoulder rubbed with salt and garlic overnight, roasted over hardwood charcoal, cut into pieces, and finished in a deeply browned-onion gescharb sauce with raisins, browned flour (einbrenn), beef broth, pepper, saffron, and a small touch of vinegar.
Ingredients
- For the roast pork:
3–4 lb pork shoulder
Coarse salt (about 2 tbsp)
6–8 cloves garlic, pressed into a paste
- For the browned flour (einbrenn):
2 cups all-purpose flour
- For the gescharb sauce:
3 large sweet onions, sliced thin
1 stick (8 tbsp) butter
2–3 cups beef broth
1/2 cup Zante currants (or small black raisins)
About 1/2 cup browned flour (from above)
Freshly ground black pepper, pinch of saffron, red wine vinegar to taste
Additional raisins and pepper, for garnish
Directions
- Roast the pork (the night before):
- Rub the pork all over with salt and garlic paste. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
- Roast the pork over hardwood charcoal (or in a 325°F oven) to an internal temperature of 150°F (65°C) — tender but not yet at serving doneness, since it will finish in the sauce.
- Brown the flour:
- Heat a dry cast-iron pan to hot but not smoking.
- Add the flour and stir constantly until nutty brown — patient work; do not burn or the sauce will taste acrid.
- Make the gescharb sauce:
- Melt the butter in a wide pot. Add the sliced onions and cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, until deeply browned, 25–35 minutes. Add raisins and let caramelize slightly with the onions.
- Sprinkle in the browned flour gradually, stirring well to avoid clumps. The texture should be a medium paste around the onions.
- Add the beef broth slowly, stirring constantly, and bring to a simmer. Cook until the sauce is medium-thick gravy weight, adjusting broth to taste.
- Season with pepper, saffron, and a small splash of red wine vinegar. Hold at low simmer while finishing the meat.
- Finish the dish:
- Cut the rested pork into bite-size pieces.
- Add the pork to the sauce and simmer until the meat reaches 165–170°F (74–77°C) internally.
- Adjust salt and spicing. Garnish with additional raisins and a pinch of pepper. Serve hot.
Bibliography
Bach, Volker. The Kitchen, Food, and Cooking in Reformation Germany. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.
Palmer, Sharon A. “Ein New Kochbuch.” Academia.edu, 25 Feb. 2014. https://www.academia.edu/6272538/Ein_New_Kochbuch.
Rumpolt, Marx. Ein new Kochbuch. 1581. German.
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