Königsberger Klopse

Königsberger Klopse belong to old East Prussia, a city table dish from Königsberg, which is off the German map now but still on the plate. This is weeknight food if you've got your broth ready, and Sunday food if you make the broth from bones. Pale is the point. If you want brown meatballs, cook another dish.

The regions split over the meat. The East Prussian way leans on veal, a little anchovy, capers, and lemon; elsewhere you'll see beef and pork mixed in, or the anchovy quietly left out by nervous cooks. Leave it out and the dish gets flatter. It doesn't taste fishy. It tastes seasoned.

The step that decides it is the poach. You lower the meatballs into trembling broth, not a hard boil and never a frying pan, because that broth has to stay clean enough to become the sauce. Boil them hard and the meat tightens, the surface breaks, and the sauce turns cloudy before you've even started.

Then the sharp things go in at the end. Lemon, capers, and a little caper brine don't belong under a rolling boil; the heat dulls them and can split the cream. Würzen, Fett, Salz zum Schluss. Serve with boiled potatoes, and don't apologise for the colour. Das ist kein Bierzelt.