German Meatballs in Caper Sauce (Königsberger Klopse)

These meatballs, called "Königsberger Klopse" in German, originated in Königsberg, long the provincial capital of East Prussia, which was located in northeastern Germany, along the Baltic Sea. After World War Two, the (then) Soviet Union annexed the city and the eastern part of East Prussia, renaming the city "Kaliningrad." Much of the German population had fled the advancing Soviet forces in the waning days of World War Two, and the Soviets resettled some of their own citizens there. Since those times, however, "Königsberger Klopse" have remained relatively popular in other parts of Germany. The basic framework of this dish, but not all of my recipe below, is from a cookbook I've had for more than four decades: "German Cooking," by Ruth Malinowski, Patricia Sinclair and Alinda Nelson; Ottenheimer Publishers, Baltimore, Maryland, 1978. Boiled potatoes and pickled beets are something of the traditional accompaniments for the meatballs.

Ingredients (for 8 meatballs):

For the meatballs:
1 pound ground beef (lean) and ground pork mixture
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I use panko bread crumbs)
3-4 anchovy fillets*
1 small onion, roughly chopped (it will go into the food processor anyhow)
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

For cooking:
water to cover the meatballs (approximately 5 cups)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 medium onion, quartered
8 peppercorns

For the sauce/gravy:
2 1/2 cups beef broth 
1 1/2 tablespoons butter + 1 tablespoon sunflower oil (or olive oil)
2 1/2 tablespoons flour
3 tablespoons capers, drained**
juice from 1/2 lemon
1 teaspoon brown mustard
salt and pepper to taste
1 egg yolk

To a food processor add the ingredients listed for the meatballs. Pulse until the meat is pretty finely ground and all the ingredients are well mixed in. In a saucepan, heat the water, salt, quartered onion and peppercorns until it begins to boil. Form the meat mixture into meatballs somewhat smaller than golf balls (adjust so that you get eight meatballs). Add the meatballs to the boiling water and reduce the heat so that the water is a steady simmer. Cook the meatballs for about 20-25 minutes, then remove them to a separate dish. Strain the broth into a large cup or dish. Add the butter/oil to the pan, melt the butter, then add the flour, stirring to mix well. Allow to lightly cook on low for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring to keep the mixture from burning or turning too brown. Turn the heat up a bit and gradually add about 2 to 2 1/2 cups of the broth, stirring constantly. The mixture should begin to thicken into a sauce/gravy as it returns to a simmer. Mix in the mustard, capers, and lemon juice, then season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove the sauce from the heat, take a couple of tablespoons of the sauce and mix it slowly, but well with the egg yolk, stirring constantly, to prevent the yolk from cooking. Add this egg and sauce mix to the overall sauce, stirring well. Return the meatballs to the sauce to reheat them, but do not boil.

* The cuisine of northern Germany, along the Baltic and North Sea coasts, has naturally been influenced by seafood, often mixed with meat, as with this dish above. The few anchovies in this recipe will NOT give a fishy taste to the meatballs.

** Capers are small dark green buds from a plant often from the general area of the Mediterranean. Spain and Italy, especially the Italian Mediterranean island of Pantelleria, are well known for their capers, which are preserved in salt or a salty brine.

I served the meatballs with boiled potatoes (dab of butter on them, as can be seen) and Harvard beets.

WORD HISTORY:
Day-This word goes back to Indo European "dhegh," which meant "burn, hot;" thus some of its offspring came to mean "periods of time when the temperature was hot;" that is, "daylight hours." For instance, Sanskrit, an old Indo European language related to English further down the family tree (and still used somewhat, particularly in India) had the derivative "dah," which meant "burn," and further "nidagha" (first "a" is long), which meant both "heat" and "summer." The Old Germanic offshoot was "dagaz," which meant "day," in the sense "daylight." This gave Anglo-Saxon "daeg," which later came to also be applied to a 24 hour period of time, which was also true of the other Germanic languages. The final "g" sound gradually disappeared in English, but is still alive in close relative German, which has "Tag,"* pronounced similarly to English "talk," and NOT to English "tag," as in "price tag." Other close Germanic relatives of English, Low German Saxon, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, all have "dag," still with the "g" present; West Frisian has "dei," and Icelandic has "dagur." "DAILY," derived from "day," was originally "daeglic" in Old English, and then "dayly" during the Middle Ages, as the final hard sound of the "c" died out. German has "täglich," with the "ä" pronounced much like our long "a," but they have retained the "ch" sound at the end. Dutch has "dagelijks," West Frisian has "daagliks," Danish and Norwegian have "daglig," and Swedish has "dagligen."

* In the Germanic languages, "d" and "t" were often interchangeable, for lack of a better word, and for example, in standard German and many German dialects, the word for Germany is "Deutschland," but in some dialects it is "Teutschland." This is frequently attributed to what linguists call "sound shifts" within languages, or closely related dialects, and this is what happened to German not long after the dialects that became English left the Continent; giving German what came to be "high" and "low" dialects (there are really "middle" dialects, but you rarely hear the term used, except by linguists). "High" means from generally higher altitudes (located mainly in the south), and "low" means from plains/flatter terrain (located mainly in the north, including the ancestral homeland of English). The term "High German" also has come to mean "high socially;" that is, "standard, school-taught German" ("Hochdeutsch" in German) as opposed to the many dialects, and many German speakers thus grow up speaking both their local dialect and standard German, which can be "quite" different, by the way. No question about it, while German dialects are still around the German speaking world, they are not as prominent as they once were, with some exceptions, but education is so widespread that everyone learns standard German.