A german soup begins a world tour
- rosemary
- Jul 31
- 4 min read
"Soup not only warms you and is easy to swallow and to digest, it also creates the illusion in the back of your mind that Mother is there." Marlene Dietrich
Yesterday we lunched with our friends. Monika - the wonderful cook and gardener - is of German origin and yesterday she decided to go back home in a sense, and cook some of her favourite German dishes. We began with crumbed and fried sardines - which, as she said, should have been herrings - but this is Australia and you can't get herrings here. Served on a base of capsicum and tomato? Yummy anyway. Dessert was an apple cake, but the star of the meal was this wonderful tureen of soup which she called Leberknödelnsuppe, but which I now think should have been called Griessnockerlsuppe. A confusion to which I shall return.
First that world tour thing in my post title. I have begun reading my chosen book group book - The Sentence by Louise Erdrich - a favourite American author of mine. She is native American and her books tend to be about the Native American peoples of America. All of which is irrelevant to this post, and I haven't got far into the book anyway.
However, near the beginning of the book - I cannot now remember the context - she creates a really long list of soups from around the world -
"Avgolomeno. Sambar. Menudo. Egusi with fufu. Ajiaco. Borscht. Leberknödel suppe. Gazpacho. Tom Yam. Solyanka. Nasselsoppa. Gumbo. Gamjaguk. Miso. Pho ga. Samgyetang."
Which gave me the idea of yet another 'series' on soups of the world. And then we went to Monika's house and there was what she described as her mother's Leberknödel suppe - not just soup but one of the soups in the above list. So today I am writing about Leberknödel suppe and Griessnockerlsuppe with the thought that I might contine to work my way around the world in soup. But then again I may not - and I do know that there are several 'world' soups that I have already written about - Avgolomeno is one, French onion and Harira are others. So let's see where we go.
The vaguely imagined plan I concocted in my sleepless moments last night was to begin - as with my world tour - back in England, but this time to go in the opposite direction - across Europe, then maybe into Asia or maybe into Africa and then Asia. We tend to ignore Africa don't we - and yet it is huge and varied? Whether I shall continue with this plan or not I am yet to see.
At the moment I have jumped a few countries into Germany, specifically Franconia, Monika's family home, which is just to the north of Bavaria - Nuremburg being its largest town.
As I said, Monika told us that our soup was Leberknödelsuppe which translates to Liver dumpling soup. And indeed it is a Franconian soup but it's not what we ate. It's a traditional dish, from Franconia, Bavaria, Austria the Czech Republic, and I'm guessing there are regional variations. Fundamentally though it is a dumpling made from beef liver mixed with bread, eggs, parsley and various spices including nutmeg, which is then cooked in a beef broth as shown here. This dumpling is particularly large, but in other photographs that I found they were generally all largeish. An acquired taste perhaps because of the liver.
But this was not what we ate. Our dumplings were made with semolina - flavoured with nutmeg again - a subtle taste which you don't really expect in a soup. The broth was also a chicken broth with little shreds of chicken and small pieces of vegetables, carrots, celery and leek I think. With parsley - and here Monika had placed the chopped parsley in the bowl and ladled the soup on to it, which I have never thought to do but is a really good thing to do as the parsley really retains its freshness. And the taste was so homely - I cannot think of a better word - a soup to recall memories of mother and childhood. Yes - home.
The dumplings use semolina flour - and Monika indeed did mention semolina. There are several recipes for this soup online, most of them, I have to say, consisting of just the dumplings in a broth as in the version from The Kitchen Maus There also seems to be a tendency to shape the dumplings into oval shapes, as in the version from Kitchen Stories - which combines the oval shape with the vegetables.
So Monika I'm afraid you got the name wrong, but absolutely not the recipe, which is one of those basic dishes that probably every housewife in Germany and Austria made, with that touch of nutmeg, and the use of semolina to make dumplings being the ultimate common denominators. A dish that speaks of comfort, of home with that indefinable taste that tells you that this is where you should be. That's what I shall be looking for when I tour the world sampling soup.
Well it's winter isn't it?
"These are my favourite days of all. The days of cold hands and hot soup" Nigel Slater
YEARS GONE BY
July 31 - the end of yet another month.
2023 - A comfort drink - hot toddy
2022 - Nothing
2021 - Nothing
2020 - Missing
2019 - Nothing
2018 - Nothing
2016 - A word from Robert Carrier
Hi there sister,
It was the one thing I did not like of German cuisine. Not a fan of Knodels!! The apple cake indeed, The cook where I worked in Germany was an amazing maker of cakes, something of course that the Germans are famous for, made for KaffeeKlatsch hour, which translated is coffe gossip time.
It was all delicious. The truly beautiful cake was perhaps my favourite, but then the crumbed/fried sardines...yummy and then that soup tasty and with yummy dumplings.. And after the meal she showed us her little hand made leather sandle/shoes made for her when she was a little girl of 4 or 5.