As November begins the two-month siege on all things attached to tables of bounty, two foods come to mind. That’s because they’ve both been on my desk, shuffled up and down through a pile of requests and inquiries.

Sometimes the pile resembles one of those tables of bounty where all that is served is the Pennsylvania Dutch “seven sweets and seven sours”. Most settlers to Ohio came from the east-Pennsylvania or the south-Kentucky. So it stands to reason that sauerkraut and stack pie would be among the dishes on our 7&7 table.

Growing up here in Ohio, our family enjoyed sauerkraut with pork or hot dogs along with sides of mashed potatoes and green beans. Early on Dad and Mom made their own kraut but later when both were working, they purchased it. Cooked all day with a bone-in pork roast or a dozen or so meaty ribs made for a hearty meal. Hot dogs came later when cost was a consideration. (Of course, today, hot dogs cost more per pound than the pork.)

Sauerkraut has been around for thousands of years. Cato, the Roman writer, recorded preserving cabbages in salt. Genghis Khan brought it to Europe after his invasion of China revealed a bounty of the fermented vegetable. James Cook always took a few barrels of the stuff on his sea voyages, thus avoiding scurvy. So it has certainly been around the world.

In Europe, Germany took to the salty, tangy dish. The Netherlands called it zuurkool; France called it choucroute; in Slavic it is called kysla` kapusta. Whatever one calls it, it can make a meal not only tasty but healthier.

Sauerkraut is a great source of vitamins C, B, K and calcium, magnesium and fiber plus other minerals. Raw sauerkraut, that which is not canned or cooked, contains microbes and enzymes along with fiber and probiotics which aid in digestion and a healthy digestive tract.

Under clean, ideal conditions, homemade sauerkraut can be made at room temperature, bottled and refrigerated for use as a relish, side dish or snack. Back in the Civil War, a doctor was noted as able to save soldier’s lives by feeding them raw sauerkraut.

 In the early 1900’s cooking sauerkraut involved hours. The simplest recipe in 1908 was found in Mrs. Curtis’s Cookbook which came bound inside that year’s issue of Household Discoveries. The recipe called for covering the kraut with cold water, boiling it for three hours and at the two-hour mark adding spareribs. The pot boiled for another hour or until the meat fell off the bones, meat and bones then removed. A shredded, drained raw potato was then added to the pot. Boiled again until mixture was thick and potato no longer raw. Add back the meat and sometime in the wee hours of the evening, supper was served. Instructions for making the sauerkraut took three-quarters of a page.

Not all of the seven sours on the table took that much time to prepare. Pickles, relishes, pickled fruits, even Harvard beets, were all standard fare.

After all that food, it was amazing that the family and guests were subjected to seven sweets. Of course, jelly and jams were included in that number so they may have already been consumed on the homemade bread and biscuits. But still, that would leave five sweets of some substantial volume. Cakes, pies, puddings and cookies all qualified. But the piece-de-resistance was a dish found in Kentucky and Appalachian cooking from the early 1800’s--Stack Pie.

Those familiar with Stack Cake remember that spiced, cookie-like cake layers are baked, then slathered with reconstituted dried apples, which themselves are heavily spiced and sweetened. The cake is then covered and let to ripen or mellow for a day. A solid, moist apple and spice cake resulted from this somewhat time consuming project.

Stack Pie goes through the same process, only with thin pies baked, stacked on top of each other with a caramel “icing” in between. The icing was said to “glue” the layers together. The intensely rich concoction was to be sliced down as a cake would be. Slices were to be only about a quarter inch thick. So, the tower of pies could easily serve a dozen or more people.

Not known country-wide, this dish has just recently been brought back to the culinary light with such articles as Pie in the Sky, by Sharon Thompson of the Lexington Herald-Leader and Melissa Clark’s piece for the New York Times. While some of the 1930’s stacks left out the all-important caramel icing and mention of an 1880 recipe for the dish in the Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery left out the icing, most other references include the sweet, caramel “glue” that really made the stack pie a sweet-tooth satisfier if there ever was one.

In order to try your own stack pie, one source says to bake a couple of 9-inch pumpkin pies and one or two 9-inch pecan pies. When cooled, carefully lift a pumpkin out of its tin onto a plate. Next goes a pecan pie on top and follow it with the other pumpkin. No mention of the caramel icing, but if pressed down ever-so lightly as they are stacked, the whole thing might stay together for cutting. If you want the caramel icing, follow this basic recipe as found in the article by Sharon Thompson.

“Combine 2 cups brown sugar, 1 cup white sugar, 2 teaspoons white corn syrup, 2 tablespoons butter and 1 cup cream in a saucepan. Bring mixture to soft boil stage. Pour over pies.”

Note: Soft boil might have meant soft ball stage which would give the mixture a soft but pliable consistency. Cooling it to lukewarm would also insure that the pies wouldn’t melt with its application.

The same sticky-sweet delight can be made with sugar cream pies, shoo-fly pies, apple butter pies and any other pie you have a curiosity about submitting to the sugary, sugar test.

So, as your November and December tables fill up with traditional family dishes, remember that sour-sweet ratio and after all is said and eaten, go for a long walk.

Contact Connie at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or Box 61, Medway, OH 45341 or via this newspaper.

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