Königsberger Klopse

East Prussian poached veal dumplings in a pale cream sauce loaded with capers

Origin: Königsberg, East Prussia & Berlin, Germany

From the journey of Caper.

This is the one dish in Europe where capers are not a sharpener within the sauce but the whole reason the sauce exists. Königsberger Klopse are meatballs of minced veal bound with soaked bread and, crucially, anchovy or salted herring, poached gently in stock rather than fried, and served in a pale velvety sauce made from that stock, enriched with cream and egg yolk and loaded with capers and a good splash of their liquor. Made without the capers it is a bland dish of white meatballs in white sauce. With them it is one of the great plates of northern European cooking. It comes from Königsberg in East Prussia, Immanuel Kant's city, which he is said never to have left. After 1945 the city became Kaliningrad and Russian and its German population was gone, so the dish now belongs to a country that no longer contains the place it is named for. It survived the displacement entirely intact, carried west by refugees, and it is cooked across Germany today as a canteen standard, a Kneipe dish, and a thing grandmothers are judged on. In the German Democratic Republic it was served under the politically sanitised name Kochklopse, the city's name having become awkward, which is a small piece of Cold War absurdity worth knowing. How capers reached a Prussian kitchen at all is a question of two routes arriving together. Mediterranean preserved goods had come north through the Hanseatic trade and up the Baltic for centuries, and French cookery dominated the German aristocratic table through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and brought its caper sauces with it. The result is French in technique, Baltic in its salted fish, and thoroughly German in how it is eaten: with boiled potatoes and, very often, beetroot. The anchovy is not optional and it is not a modern refinement. It is in the earliest recipes, it does not make the dish taste of fish, and it supplies the savoury depth that the pale sauce would otherwise lack.

Ingredients

Klopse

1 whole stale white bread roll, crusts removed
100 ml whole milk, for soaking
500 g minced veal, or half veal and half pork
1 whole small onion, very finely chopped
4 whole salted anchovy fillets, finely chopped to a paste
1 whole egg
0.25 tsp ground allspice
0.5 tsp freshly ground white pepper

Poaching

1 litre light veal or chicken stock
2 whole bay leaves
1 whole onion, halved and studded with 3 cloves
6 whole allspice berries

Sauce

40 g unsalted butter
40 g plain flour
600 ml strained poaching stock
6 tbsp capers, rinsed and drained, plus 3 tbsp of their liquor
120 ml double cream
2 whole egg yolks
2 tbsp lemon juice

To Finish

2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped

Method

Tear the bread roll into a bowl, pour over the milk, and leave for ten minutes. Squeeze out the excess milk and crumble the bread fine.
Mix the veal, the squeezed bread, the chopped onion, the anchovy paste, the egg, allspice, and white pepper thoroughly with your hands for a good two minutes, until the mixture is smooth and slightly tacky. Add no salt.
Wet your hands and roll the mixture into 16 balls the size of a small plum. Chill for fifteen minutes if you have time.
Bring the stock to a simmer with the bay, the clove-studded onion, and the allspice berries. Lower the Klopse in gently and poach, uncovered, at the barest tremble for 18 to 20 minutes.
Lift the Klopse out with a slotted spoon into a warm dish and cover. Strain the stock and measure out 600 ml.
Melt the butter in a clean pan, stir in the flour, and cook the roux for two minutes without colouring. Whisk in the strained stock a ladleful at a time until smooth, then simmer for five minutes.
Stir in the capers and their liquor and simmer for one minute more.
Whisk the cream and egg yolks together in a bowl. Take the sauce off the heat, whisk a ladleful of hot sauce into the cream mixture to temper it, then pour it all back into the pan, whisking.
Return to the very lowest heat and stir for two to three minutes until it thickens enough to coat a spoon. Do not let it approach a simmer. Add the lemon juice and taste.
Return the Klopse to the sauce to warm through for two minutes, scatter with parsley, and serve with boiled potatoes and beetroot.

Notes

Do not salt the meat mixture or the sauce until the very end. Between anchovies, capers, caper liquor, and stock there is a great deal of salt in this dish, and the classic failure is a sauce that has been seasoned twice. The anchovy is authentic and is in the earliest versions. Salted herring or a spoonful of brine from a jar of rollmops is the more historically East Prussian choice; neither makes the dish taste of fish. Boiled potatoes are compulsory and beetroot, either pickled or as a simple salad, is the standard partner in Berlin. Some households serve rice instead, which is a post-war economy that has stuck. In the German Democratic Republic the dish was renamed Kochklopse to avoid the name of a city that was no longer German. Both names refer to the same thing and older German cookbooks may use either.

The Gastrographer

Name: Königsberger Klopse
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 40 min
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Germany
Ingredients: 1 whole stale white bread roll, crusts removed; 100 ml whole milk, for soaking; 500 g minced veal, or half veal and half pork; 1 whole small onion, very finely chopped; 4 whole salted anchovy fillets, finely chopped to a paste; 1 whole egg; 0.25 tsp ground allspice; 0.5 tsp freshly ground white pepper; 1 litre light veal or chicken stock; 2 whole bay leaves; 1 whole onion, halved and studded with 3 cloves; 6 whole allspice berries; 40 g unsalted butter; 40 g plain flour; 600 ml strained poaching stock; 6 tbsp capers, rinsed and drained, plus 3 tbsp of their liquor; 120 ml double cream; 2 whole egg yolks; 2 tbsp lemon juice; 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control