The latest interchanges about favorite remembered foods brought to mind a sauce which my grandmother Klara (originally from Sekeschut) always used to greatly improve the texture and flavor of many canned vegetables. She called it either einbrenn sauce or simply, "einbrenn."  Einbrenn is basically the same as a French roux.

2 tablespoons of fat (e.g. bacon drippings, Crisco, butter, or originally probably lard)
2 tablespoons of flour for every cup of liquid to be thickened 

The fat is melted and then the flour is added to it, lightly cooking until bubbly.  This mixture is added to the liquid to be thickened.

Einbrenn spinach was a favorite in our family using bacon drippings as the fat.  The einbrenn was combined with chopped, cooked spinach and crumbled bits of crisply-fried bacon were added. 

• 1 recipe of Sauerkraut Sauce (see below)

• 2 cups sauerkraut, rinsed and liquid squeezed out

• 1 cup chicken broth or water

• 1 tablespoon sugar

• Apple cider vinegar to taste (optional)

• Salt to taste

• 1 tablespoon butter, melted

• 1 tablespoon flour

Put sauerkraut and broth in a small saucepan and cook over low heat for 1 to 1.5 hours. 

Add sugar, apple cider vinegar if preferred, and salt. Bring to boil.
Mix butter with flour; add to sauce and, while stirring, bring to boil.  Serve with fried foods.

4 cups sauerkraut, rinsed and drained (reserved 1 to 1.5 cups liquid)
½ cup butter.
1 medium onion, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon honey

Puree sauerkraut in a food processor, then braise in 1/4 cup butter.  Sauté onion in remaining butter and add to sauerkraut. Add 1 cup sauerkraut juice, cover, and stew for 30 minutes, adding more juice as needed to make a medium thick sauce. Add salt and pepper, lemon juice, and honey for a sweet and sour taste.  Serve with roast goose, duck or turkey.

It's very simple-there are two different ways that it can be done and yield the same nutty taste.  One is to slowly cook the flour in the fat until the whole thing turns a golden brown.  The second way is to use a pan with very low heat on the naked flour until it urns golden.  (the nervous cook can use a pan in a 350 degree oven with the same result.).  Frequent scraping and stirring is required no matter how you brown the flour.   No matter the way it is prepared, einbrenn does not thicken as much as a white roux.

We could not afford meat every day, so a "Zuspeis" made with almost any vegetable—beans, peas, carrots, spinach, Savoy cabbage, Swiss chard, zucchini/vegetable marrow, potatoes, etc.  Various herbs and spices were added to enhance the flavor of the different vegetables.  Einbrenn was added to Kren-Soss (horseradish sauce) and Paradeis-Soss (tomato sauce)—served with the beef or chicken boiled for soups.  It was also used to thicken vegetable and creamed vegetable soups.  A favorite and very economical soup was Einbrennsupp, simply made with fat, flour, water, caraway seeds and salt.  When we had nothing else to eat in the camps, this soup kept us alive.

I was taught to cook the fat and flour only till it turned a golden color—never brown—so as not to discolor the Zuspeis, soup or sauce. 

Normally the fat (butter, lard or oil) is melted in the pan, then the flour added and stirred together until the desired color is reached—the browner the color, the stronger the flavor.  If you want a more delicate taste, cook to a gold color.  Then the pan is cooled off a bit, the stock or water is added and stirred with a whisk to prevent lumps from forming.  The vegetables are added after that.  I have not heard of browning the flour alone, but I could be wrong.

In our affluent western world we try to cook vegetables au natural with less calories, but occasionally I succumb to temptation and add an Einbrenn—I couldn't imagine Kirbsezuspeis (grated zucchini or vegetable marrow), flavored with dill, parsley and sour cream) any other way!  Des schmeckt gut—that tastes great!

We brown it, also and the aromas are so wonderful.  In many of our recipes, we stir the veggies into the roux (einbrenn) and then add minced garlic.  Yum!  I know that we use it for our Swiss Chard, in bean soup, to make our green bean (some call it green bean soup), and for many other veggie dishes.  It is very popular in New Orleans, too.  Of course, I think it tastes best with bacon drippings, but we now use olive oil most of the time. 

Einbrennsupp is still a staple of my Oma's cooking, and a warm memory of childhood, as it was one of the first soups I learned to make.  As a special treat she would sometimes drop an egg into the cooking soup and you would get these ribbons of egg white in the soup, along with part (or all) of the hard cooked yolk.  As a child it all seemed very magical and it was fun to watch the cooking.