Presssack mit Musik

Presssack mit Musik sits on the Franconian Brotzeit board, Brotzeit being the bread-and-cold-cuts meal that solves a summer evening, a picnic, or a Sunday when nobody wants another pot on the stove. Red Presssack gets its dark colour from blood; white Presssack does without it. Both are head-cheese, Sülze, gelled meat in a casing, sliced cool and sharpened with onion, vinegar, and oil.

Franconia claims this board hardest, especially around Würzburg, Bamberg, and the beer cellars, but the family is wider. Swabia and Baden have Schwartenmagen, head-cheese heavy with rind; the north eats Sülze cleaner and often with remoulade and potatoes. The words mit Musik travel through Hesse with Handkäse, sour-milk cheese, but here the music is raw onion on pork. Im Norden anders, im Süden anders. Das ist kein Bierzelt.

The dish works or fails in the onion bowl before the meat is touched. Salt the onion into the vinegar first and let it stand, because salt draws juice from the onion, the vinegar tames the raw heat, and those juices become the dressing. Oil goes in after that. Add it first and it coats the onion, so the acid cannot do its work.

Slice the Presssack cold, then let the dressed plate stand only long enough for the cut faces to take the sour edge, 15 or 20 minutes. A long soak makes the gel weep and turns the board slack. This is the old larder doing its job: head, rind, trim, blood if you choose the red one. Weggeworfen wird nichts. Erst verstehen, dann kochen.