Recipes from the Reich - Hitler's Home Front: Memoirs of a Hitler Youth - Don A. Gregory, Wilhelm R. Gehlen

Hitler's Home Front: Memoirs of a Hitler Youth - Don A. Gregory, Wilhelm R. Gehlen (2016)

Appendix. Recipes from the Reich

Although there are numerous recipes included here, I advise the reader not to recklessly indulge in eating some of the things we ate in those times. We survived without too many problems, but I doubt that a 21st-century person could live healthily on what we had to eat. If you do try some of my mother’s recipes and feel unwell afterward, don’t blame me; for some of them I wouldn’t recommend myself, but we did live on such things and so did millions of other Germans. A few recipes you will recognise, but you might not know how they were prepared seventy-plus years ago with only basic and sometimes improvised ingredients.

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The humble Kartoffel, or potato as you know it, should have a special place in any book on German cooking. There are over ninety recipes for cooking them that I know of, but our favourite was and still is the Reibekuchen or potato cakes. They are cheap and easy to make, but don’t make too many at once as they are not as good cold as they are hot and crispy. At home we made them like this.

Potato Cakes

3 or 4 large potatoes

1 medium onion

1 egg

1 teaspoon of cornflour (Yes, we did have cornflour during the war; it was commonly called ‘Maizena’ after the brand name.)

Salt to taste

Peel the potatoes and the onion and grate them on the fine setting. We used a hand-held manual grater, but any type will do. Add the egg, cornflour and salt to taste, then mix well in a bowl. Drop fry over medium heat in vegetable oil. You can make the cakes thin if you want them extra crispy or thick if you just want them crispy around the edges. You can fry several at one time in a large cast-iron skillet. We had no vegetable oil so we used whatever we had, usually chicken fat or lard. We always had rabbits but you don’t get much fat from a rabbit. After a few minutes check to see if the underside is golden brown, if so, turn the cakes over and do the same until nice and brown and that’s it. It’s hard to cook them fast enough to keep up with everyone eating them. Granddad Willem loved the things. He could gobble down a dozen at mealtime.

Fried Potatoes the German Way

Potatoes were not often simply fried because it required a lot more fat, but this is how it was done and it’s still a good way to make them today. Use only new freshly-dug potatoes. Wash them and boil for a few minutes with peels on. Drain the water and let them cool so you can handle them for scraping the thin skin off. Let them cool completely; it is no good frying warm potatoes, they turn into mush.

While the potatoes are cooling, cut up an onion very fine, not the typical American way, or use a coarse grater. Dice a hard ripe tomato, then fry the onion and tomato in butter until the onion browns lightly. Cut up the potatoes as normal for frying and fry on medium heat for 15-20 minutes, stirring often, until brown and add salt and pepper to taste. Mix in the onions and tomatoes and serve hot.

If we had potatoes or other vegetables left over and had to do something with them, we made Kartoffelbrot (potato bread) or Gemüsebrot (vegetable bread) using a recipe like this.

Potato Bread

2lbs (900g) all-purpose flour

1lb (450g) leftover potatoes or other vegetables

2 teaspoons salt

8oz (200g) cottage cheese

1 packet dry yeast

Dissolve the yeast in a bit of warm water with the salt. Mash the vegetables cold and mix in the flour and the dissolved yeast in a glass bowl. Add the cottage cheese and then add water until the mixture is not sticky and doesn’t cling to the bowl. Knead as you would any other bread. Cover with a towel and leave for about an hour at room temperature. The dough will double in size as it rises. Then put the dough in a bread baking pan and leave it standing for another thirty minutes. A pre-heated oven is best and our coal or wood fired oven was warm any time day or night. A hot temperature is required at first; about 400°F (230°C) on modern ovens, then you can reduce the temperature to about 250°F (130°C) after fifteen minutes. Spray lightly with water several times during the baking. Baking time is about an hour. A shiny golden-brown colour will tell you it’s done. It can be sliced when cold and fried or just used as sandwich bread, although it is not good with sweet preserves. I tried strawberry jam on Kartoffelbrot, but I wouldn’t recommend it. However, I knew people when I was a boy who would spread sweet molasses on pickled herrings to make them edible.

Of apples and potatoes, we had plenty; so how do you put the two together when that’s all you have? You can make apple and potato stew or Himmel und Erde as it is called in German. The name means ‘Heaven and Earth’ but I don’t know why it was called that unless it’s because potatoes are from the earth and apples are grown up in trees.

Apple and Potato Stew

3lbs (1.35kg) potatoes

1lb (450g) apples

1 onion, chopped

4oz (100g) cured bacon, diced

Salt and vinegar to taste

Cut up the potatoes and boil in a quart of salted water. Peel the apples and cut them into slices and add them to the boiling potatoes. When done, add a teaspoon of sugar if you used sour apples. If you used sweet apples, add a tablespoon of wine vinegar. Fry the cut-up bacon with the onion and when golden-brown, pour over the boiled potatoes and apples. This recipe works well with pears too.

Another unusual dish was called Blindes Huhn (blind chicken), which has absolutely nothing to do with chickens, but it does require bacon, so maybe it should have been called Blindes Schwein.

Blind Chicken

½lb (225g) lean bacon, not sliced

1lb (450g) fresh green beans cut into 1-inch lengths

½lb (225g) fresh carrots, diced

2 apples, diced

1lb (450g) potatoes, diced

Salt, pepper, and chopped parsley

Boil the bacon in a quart (about 1 litre) of water for about an hour. Add the carrots, potatoes and green beans and boil until all are soft. Add the diced apples last because they don’t take long to cook. After the apples are soft (about forty-five minutes), take the bacon out and cut it into small pieces and put back into the pot. Add salt, pepper and parsley to taste. Continue boiling at low heat but don’t cook until everything goes to pieces. We also used chopped thistle roots instead of carrots and dried beans when fresh beans weren’t available.

I’ve tried the following simple recipes with local tomatoes and they worked perfectly.

Roasted Tomatoes

Slice and roast a large onion in a frying pan with a minimum amount of oil. We used bacon fat if we had it or whatever was available, but you can use vegetable oil as well. Turn the onion slices over when brown, then add sliced tomatoes, salt, pepper and sprinkle with dried parsley. Simmer for about five minutes and serve. Granddad Willem spiced his with liquid Maggie seasoning, which has a flavour similar to soy sauce, to give it a tangy taste. Liquid Maggie was obtainable at times during the war and we grew parsley ourselves. In the autumn, we cut the parsley and bunched it and dried it by hanging it upside down in a dry sunny spot or we cut it up with scissors and dried it in the sun, then just put it in a glass jar with a lid.

Steamed Tomatoes

1 or 2lbs (225 or 450g) of tomatoes

2oz (50g) butter or margarine

1 onion

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Salt, lovage, and pepper to taste

Don’t use oversized tomatoes for this recipe; small or medium ones are best. Wash them first and cut them as if you intend to quarter the tomato but only cut half way through. Then put the butter into a baking dish and let the butter melt in the oven for a minute. Place the tomatoes in the dish and fill the cross cuts with finely chopped onion and the spices. Put in a hot oven for ten minutes and when done, sprinkle parsley over them and serve. This recipe works with mushrooms too.

Tomato Salad

Cut four medium-size ripe tomatoes into small pieces, do the same with a medium-size onion and add chopped greens of any variety to the mixture. Stir in a few drops of vegetable oil and a spoon of mayonnaise. Stir everything well and add salt and pepper to taste. Put in a cool place for an hour before serving. You can also add bits of cooked meat just before serving if you want.

Now this may sound like a salad you could get in any restaurant in America, but the difference is all in the preparation. Few cooks spend any time cutting up anything. A salad today looks like you just walked through the greengrocer’s and put things on your plate. That is not a proper salad and salad bars have nothing to do with a real salad. Things have to be cut up finely if you want the flavours of all the ingredients to mix. That’s the reason for the mixing and the one hour wait before eating. It really is a different taste and is not like the so-called salads you’re used to. Now if you use a lot of carrots in the salad, you should add a tablespoon of vinegar to counteract the sweetness of the carrots. If you like really sweet salads, add a teaspoon of Demerara sugar while you are mixing things together. That kind of sugar was available to us at times during the war. After the invasion of Holland, there was lots of it that the Dutch had accumulated from their colonies of Surinam and Curacao. It’s a brown coarse cane sugar and you can still buy it. It’s still called Demerara sugar and today it’s imported from Guyana.

One of our favourite ways of eating potatoes was in potato salad, but there was no mayonnaise - so we made our own. There are many ways of doing this but this is my mother’s recipe. A recipe for potato salad follows.

Mayonnaise

1 cup of vegetable oil

1 egg yolk

Salt to taste

1 teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice

Make sure before you start that all the ingredients are at the same temperature. You can warm the oil under hot water if needed. Beat the egg yolk with the salt until it thickens. You can use an electric mixer but it’s almost as fast to do it by hand unless you’re making a quart of the stuff. We never made that much because it would go bad before we could use all of it. The next step is the most critical. Add the mixed oil and vinegar in small amounts, even one drop at a time at first while continuing to beat the mixture. After the first two dozen drops, you can increase the amount added. Continue adding the oil and vinegar mix until the mayonnaise is creamy. Sometimes, depending on the temperature of the kitchen, the mayonnaise will become lumpy. You can recover from this by adding cold water a few drops at a time as you continue to beat the mixture. You can also add things like cream of mustard, celery salt, and pepper if you want. It may take a few tries to get this right, but once you figure out what works in your kitchen, you’ll never buy mayonnaise again.

This is the German way of making potato salad. There are several variations and other ingredients can be added to please yourself. This is the way my mother made it for a family of four.

Potato Salad

1½lb (675g) potatoes

2 or 3 rashers of bacon

1 large onion

1 tablespoon cooking oil

2 tablespoons salad dressing or mayonnaise

A sprig each of parsley and celery, chopped

1 rollmop (herring fillet wrapped around a pickle) or 1 pickled herring

¼ cup white vinegar or the juice from the rollmops or herrings

Salt and pepper to taste

Boil the potatoes until they’re just done through but not too soft. Remove them from the heat but do not drain. You want the potatoes to stay warm. Chop the onion and the herring into small pieces and put in a bowl with the vinegar or pickle juice. Add the cooking oil, chopped parsley, celery and salad dressing or mayonnaise and mix the ingredients well. Cut bacon into small pieces and fry until dark brown. Peel the still-warm potatoes, cut them into small (about half-inch) pieces, and put them into the herring mixture and stir continuously for a minute. The idea of doing this while the potatoes are still warm is that they will absorb the flavours of the mixture better. It does make a difference. Pour the hot bacon and the bacon fat over the potatoes and mix everything well. Add salt and pepper in the amount you want and mix again. Place in refrigerator to cool. Potato salad is great served with frankfurters or boiled eggs. Russian potato salad is similar, but they add a lightly-beaten raw egg and a sliced or chopped boiled egg to the mixture. This is an excellent dish for hot days. We never worried about it going bad in the heat of summer since it was always eaten by a hungry family soon after it was made.

The same basic recipe was used with any other vegetables we had. There were a few combinations of vegetables that were especially good: asparagus and tomatoes, cauliflower and tomatoes, beans and tomatoes, beans and cucumbers, celery and tomatoes, red cabbage and radishes, potatoes and cucumbers, and even apples and cucumbers (with ground nuts added if we had any). Our aim in those days was to stretch the available food as far as we could. Not much was thrown away and even potato peelings were washed and used. If they were too spotty, they went into the rabbit or chicken feed.

Another of our favourites was beet, instead of potato, salad.

Beet Salad

3lbs (1.35kg) raw beets

1 onion

2 whole dill pickles

1 apple, cored (and peeled if you want)

½ teaspoon sugar

2 tablespoons white or red vinegar

1 sprig parsley, chopped

Salt and pepper to taste

Boil beets until soft, peel and cube into ½-inch pieces. Cut up and mix everything but the beets. Add the sugar, parsley and salt and mix again. Now add the cut up beets, and then let the salad sit overnight in a refrigerator. If the beet cubes stick together, add a little cooking oil and mix again. This salad can also be made with boiled eggs, pickled herring, or leftover boiled meat of any sort.

In all these salads, you can add cut up hard-boiled eggs if you have them and again, the smaller the pieces the better.

To make a bean salad instead, you need fresh picked green beans; canned beans will do but the results won’t be as good. Cut the beans into inch-long pieces and boil them with salt added, but don’t boil them until they are soft. They have to be crispy to make a good salad. When cooked, drain the water and let them cool. Dice a small onion into very small pieces and add to the drained beans, add a tablespoon of vinegar and a spoon full of vegetable oil, some pepper or nutmeg, mix and let it really cool, stirring at times. Bean salad is served today as a starter, but we ate no starters, we ate what was on the table. The same salad was made with beet root. We also made herring salad from marinated herrings cut to pieces with a spoonful of our homemade mayonnaise added. Schnitzels are best served with this salad, but they were hard to come by.

Another pork recipe, that didn’t get made very often even before the war, had the odd name of Schneeschaufel, which means snow shovel. I guess the sour cream is supposed to represent the snow and this is how it is made.

Schneeschaufel (Serves 4-6)

3lbs (1.35kg) of pork, preferably shoulder with the skin on

1 teaspoon of Caraway seed

1 tablespoon shortening

1 large onion

1 large carrot

½ cup of sweet beer (regular beer with ½ teaspoon of sugar added will do)

3 (or more) tablespoons of sour cream

First make multiple incisions into the skin of the pork diagonally with a sharp knife. Sprinkle salt and pepper over it and rub into the incisions. Melt the shortening in a roasting pan and put the pork in the pan. Cut up the carrot and onion and cover the meat with it. Add a cup of water, the caraway, and more salt if needed and roast for 1-1½ hours on medium heat in your oven. Baste the meat with the beer often during the baking. You can lower the heat and cook for a longer time if you want. This makes the pork skin soft as butter. When it’s finally done, put it in cool place for an hour and then pour the sour cream over it. Your show shovel is now ready to serve. You can also use potatoes instead of carrots, or use both.

Contrary to modern cookbooks that list recipes for beef, lamb, or even chicken or turkey schnitzel, true German schnitzels (Kotletts) are made only from pork. In Austria, a schnitzel is nowadays made from veal. Schnitzel is an Austrian word anyway, so I guess they can make it the way they want. There is even a law there (no surprise) that says anything called a schnitzel must be made from veal. A schnitzel first has to be tenderized and this is done using a wooden mallet. An old saying in Germany goes that if you order a schnitzel in a restaurant and you cannot hear hammering from the kitchen, you won’t get a good schnitzel. The pork cutlet has to be dipped in a beaten egg twice, salted and spiced, then dipped again in breadcrumbs and fried in a covered cast iron frying pan on low to medium heat, and turned often until golden brown on both sides. That’s a simple schnitzel. Other ingredients make different schnitzels and may include mushrooms (with mushroom sauce), celery, cloves and onions. The names vary from Jäger Schnitzel to Zigeuner Schnitzel.

This soup starter mixture keeps quite well at room temperature because of the salt content and it can be stored in the refrigerator for a very long time.

Soup Starter

2 carrots

2 celery sticks or a handful of the greens from the tops of celery

2 garlic cloves

A handful of parsley

A handful of lovage or a half teaspoon of powdered lovage (ground lovage root or Ligusticum) or ‘Liebstöckel’, called Maggie Kraut by the Germans because of its slightly Maggie-seasoning taste

3 tablespoons salt

Black pepper to taste

Vegetable oil

Cut up the carrots, celery and garlic very fine. Put into a blender and add a small amount of the vegetable oil. Blend on slow speed and add oil until you make a thick paste. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend again on medium speed. Add oil as needed to keep the mixture from becoming too thick. Pour into jars and add a lid. Refrigerated, this keeps for months. Add to any soup or stew to improve the flavour. A little goes a long way though, so use sparingly. A little Maggie seasoning can also be added during the blending if desired.

Vegetable Cakes

½lb (225g) dried beans (lentils or peas)

1 medium onion

1 stale bread roll

2 eggs

Parsley

Salt to taste

2oz (50g) breadcrumbs

Boil the beans until almost soft enough to eat. Cut the onion into large pieces and boil for about a minute. Put both through the grinder along with the stale bread roll. To this mixture add the eggs, salt, some parsley and the breadcrumbs. We made our own breadcrumbs but you can use the ready-made ones just as well. Mix everything together and form into round balls and deep-fat fry until brown. It’s sort of a vegetable hushpuppy without the cornbread. This is a simple and cheap meal. We also added mushrooms when we had them, but added a bit of marjoram to weaken the earthy taste. You can use oregano if you don’t have marjoram. There is also an old southern United States recipe that’s similar. You use black eye peas cooked done and mashed up. This is mixed with a little plain flour, an egg and red pepper, sage and even grated onions if you want. When fried in small patties until brown, it was used as a substitute for breakfast sausage during the Depression. With the sage and red pepper (and no onion), it does taste a little like pork sausage. Add some biscuits and milk gravy and you’ll have a good breakfast for any true Southerner.

We also grew Savoy or Curly cabbage when we could get the seeds and it was a welcomed change. There are many ways to prepare it, but one of our favourites was a stew because it combined other things we might have already and it would feed the entire family. Beef is listed in the ingredients below, but rabbit was what we had most of the time.

Curly Cabbage Stew

2lbs (900g) Savoy cabbage

3 or 4 medium potatoes, peeled and sliced

1lb (450g) fatty beef, cubed

2oz (50g) vegetable oil

1 large onion, peeled and sliced

1 beef bouillon cube

Fry onion with the meat in your pot or pan with a little oil, then add the bouillon cube that has been crushed and dissolved in a cup (or more) of water, add the Savoy cabbage that you have cut into small pieces and the sliced potatoes. For spices you can use nutmeg, salt and parsley, and then simmer on low heat for 40 minutes and it’s done.

Boiled sauerkraut (the German way) made from Savoy cabbage takes a while, so be patient. Canned sauerkraut is available anywhere if you haven’t learned how to make your own yet. When you boil the sauerkraut, add salt and half a teaspoon of ground peppercorns and a piece of pork fatback. We used pigs’ trotters mostly because they have a lot of fat for flavour and we weren’t about to waste that. This has to boil for at least an hour on medium heat until the meat is tender. Don’t drain off the water, that’s where most of the nutrients are. When the sauerkraut is done, add some previously-cooked drained lima beans or white navy beans and mix with the kraut. Boiled kraut is good served with mashed potatoes. Of course, late in the war, even finding pigs’ trotters was impossible, so it was sauerkraut soup and the horrible taste still lingers in my mouth. I haven’t cooked it since the war.

Chicken Ragout (serves 4-6)

1 chicken (5-6lbs [2.2-2.7kg])

3oz (75g) butter

3oz (75g) all-purpose flour

4oz (100g) sour cream

1 or 2 bay leaves

Pinch of lovage (or Maggikraut), pepper, parsley and salt

1 onion

1 egg yolk

Boil the chicken for least for an hour until the meat comes off the bones easily, then mix the cooled liquid from the boiled chicken with the flour, butter, spices, and salt. Make sure not to mix the flour in very hot liquid or it will become lumpy. Then you can add the egg yolk and boil all this for a few minutes. Add the chicken meat and the sour cream last. We had no sour cream so we used a tablespoon of vinegar. Ragout was usually served with mashed potatoes and cauliflower but Kohlrabi will do as well.

Rabbit ragout is made in the same fashion but the rabbit needs longer to boil. In fact ragout can be made with any other scraps of meat; pork as well as beef. Even wild pigeons were trapped (illegally) and used during the war when we thought we could get away with it. Poaching could get you into serious trouble, especially repeated poaching.

Beer Soup

1 quart (1 litre) of beer

4oz (100g) sugar

Half a lemon

Cinnamon or ginger

2 egg yolks lightly beaten

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon cornflour

First you add the sugar to half the beer and put in a cinnamon or ginger stick. Heat this in a saucepan almost to boiling. If you have spices such as arrack or aniseed, you can add them at any point in the cooking for a little added flavour. In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks with the cold beer and stir until it foams. Add the cornflour, milk, and lemon and continue stirring. When this is mixed thoroughly, add to the hot beer and boil for one minute and it’s done. You could drink it warm or cold and even turn it into a pudding by adding more cornflour and sugar during boiling.

If you have ever tried what the Germans call Glühwein or hot wine, usually drunk at Christmas parties, then why not try wine soup? Red or white, Moselle, Zinfandel or your average home brew will all do just fine for making this tasty soup.

Wine Soup

½ pint (275ml) of water

Cinnamon and cloves

2oz (50g) of rice or tapioca

½ pint (275ml) of wine

3oz (75g) of sugar

Boil the water with the cinnamon and two cloves and after it begins to boil, add the rice or tapioca. When the rice or tapioca is done, add the wine and heat up again until almost boiling; then add the sugar and it’s done. You can also add a few cut up pieces of toast to the soup if you want, or even crackers. It takes about 20-30 minutes to make this soup and it can be eaten hot or cold.

Although Halloween wasn’t celebrated until relatively recently in Germany, we grew lots of pumpkins during the war and after. In the autumn, when there were plenty of them, creative ways of preparing pumpkin for the table were found including a soup that is quite tasty.

Pumpkin Soup

1-1½lbs (450-675g) of cut-up pumpkin

2 pints (1 litre) water

Cinnamon

Lemon peel and apple peel

Teaspoon of cornflour

½ cup of white wine

Lemon juice

3oz (75g) sugar

Bring the cut-up pumpkin and water to a moderate boil. Add the cinnamon, lemon peel and apple peel. Mix the cornflour thoroughly in a bit of cold water and add to boiling pumpkin. When the mixture has returned to a boil, add the wine, lemon juice and sugar. Continue boiling for a few minutes and it’s done.

There aren’t too many meat recipes I can include because we didn’t have much meat at the time, but I do want to give my mother’s recipe for Sauerbraten since it is a traditional German dish, and we did have it occasionally until about 1941. Since I moved to the United States, I’ve often been asked how to make this dish because there are many ways to make it wrong and there’s no fast way to make it at all. Sauerbraten marinade can be purchased in good shops but this is how it was done in my time by my mother. To make a good Sauerbraten you first need a cast iron pan with a lid. This Sauerbraten recipe takes time and if you want it for Sunday dinner, you’d better start on Thursday.

Sauerbraten on Sunday

3lbs (1.3kg) of bottom round beef roast without bone

2 large onions

3 bay leaves

1 pint (575ml) mixture of half wine vinegar and half water

Start on Thursday by putting the meat in a ceramic bowl with the wine vinegar and water mixture. Don’t use a metal bowl because the acidity of the vinegar reacts with the metal and the result will have a metallic taste. Slice the onions and put under and over the beef. Add the bay leaves and a little salt, but you don’t have to add the salt now if you prefer to add it after cooking. This goes in the refrigerator. Turn the beef over at least once a day. On Sunday, start early on the beef. Take it out of the bowl and dry it with a paper towel. Heat your cast-iron skillet with a small amount of oil. Slice the onion and layer the bottom of the pan with it, then lay the beef on top of it. Cover it with any remaining onion slices. Now you can add salt and pepper to taste if you didn’t add the salt earlier. You can also add other herbs and spices that go well with beef at this time. Cover the pan with the lid and cook on a very low heat. You have to be patient because it has to cook very slowly and when the pan gets too dry, add a bit of water. The onions of course turn black from the roasting before the meat is ready. Check the progress and turn the beef every half hour. It might take two hours for the meat to cook, depending on the size of the portion. It is ready when you can insert a sharp kitchen knife easily. Take the meat out and use the juice for making gravy by adding more water mixed with a teaspoon of cornflour. Put the meat back into the pan with the gravy and let it cook for another 30 minutes. If you want it more sour, add a teaspoon of wine vinegar before the last 30 minutes of cooking. Sauerbraten is best served with boiled red cabbage and boiled potatoes.

One of the essential meals during the war was vegetable Auflauf (casserole), especially if you had a garden and very little meat to go around. The following vegetable recipes are well worth trying out. Meat can be added to any of them but it should be boiled separately, not fried or roasted.

Vegetable Casserole (Auflauf)

2 pints (1 litre)water

Salt to taste

2lbs (900g) of any vegetable

1lb (450g) potatoes

½ cup self-raising flour

1 onion

Grate or cut your vegetables (except the onions and potatoes) into small pieces and put into boiling salted water. Add the potatoes that have been sliced thin and continue boiling until all the vegetables are soft but not overcooked. Drain most of the water from the pan and transfer vegetables to a casserole pan. If you are including boiled meat in the recipe, add it now to the vegetables in the casserole pan and mix. Brown the flour with the onion in a skillet with a bit of oil and then add small amounts of water while continuing to stir, making a thickened gravy. Pour over the vegetables and put in the oven on medium heat for another 10 minutes. We made Auflaufs with carrots, kohlrabi, green beans, Savoy cabbage, turnips, sauerkraut, kale and white cabbage. For some reason though, it doesn’t work well with red cabbage. We tried several times and it just never turned out right. If we didn’t have any other vegetables, we made it anyway with just the potatoes.

Here are a few cottage cheese recipes we used; some are sweet, some are spicy. We ate it either way. Try some of them, but please, use cottage cheese from the shop. The smell of a gallon of milk that has been standing on the porch in 85-degree weather for a few days might change your mind about making your own, but if you’re determined, this first recipe is for you.

Cottage Cheese

8oz (200g) milk curd, drain off any excess whey

Salt to your taste

2 tablespoons of fresh cut-up chives

1 teaspoon of fresh parsley and any other spices you like

Mix this and let it settle in the refrigerator for a few hours. Do not use dried chives or parsley unless you steep it in hot water for 30 minutes. This cottage cheese would most often be eaten on black bread. You can also add two tablespoons of freshly-grated carrot and a pinch of paprika instead of the chives, or the flesh of two large tomatoes and a grated onion. At times we added fried bacon pieces, but bacon was hard to come by, so we used fried ‘garden bacon’ (onions).

There are many other ways to prepare cottage cheese, but the way we liked it best was spread on bread with sliced tomato and cucumber or radishes. Chopped ham can also be added and when American GIs came in 1945 and introduced us to Spam, we naturally used it. ‘Spam’ was one of the first English words we learned and Spam and cottage cheese sandwiches were great eating for us. We discovered dozens of ways to prepare the stuff and would trade for it whenever we could.

Cottage Cheese Butter

5oz (125g) cottage cheese

3 tablespoons milk

5oz (125g) softened margarine or butter

1 small onion, finely chopped or grated

1 teaspoon fresh chives

Salt and pepper to taste

Mix the cottage cheese thoroughly with the milk and margarine. Add the onion, chives, salt and pepper and mix again. That’s all there is to it and on freshly-baked bread, it is really good. We even tried to fry cottage cheese and after a few failures, my mother got it right and the end result was a rather nice dish.

Fried Cottage Cheese

2oz (50g) softened margarine or butter

2 eggs

1lb (450g) boiled potatoes, mashed

½lb (225g) cottage cheese

2oz (50g) flour

1 teaspoon each of salt and nutmeg or to taste

Pepper and chopped chives if available

Mix eggs and margarine thoroughly, and then add the mashed potatoes, cottage cheese, flour and other ingredients. Form small patties from a tablespoon of the mixture and fry in a pan until brown on both sides.

There were also many ways of preparing sweet cottage cheese using fruit or berries. We had canned fruit in the winter that we had put up ourselves earlier in the season and we used it with cottage cheese to make cheese cakes. All this depended on the availability of sour milk. Cottage cheese was normally not available at the market. The small amount of milk we got went mostly to baby Fred or we used it to make soups to which we would add prunes or raisins.

Cottage Cheese Dumplings

4oz (100g) softened butter

3 eggs, lightly beaten

4oz (100g) cornflour

2oz (50g) sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1lb (450g) cottage cheese

½lb (225g) self-raising flour

Sugar and cinnamon

Beat the butter first until soft and foamy and then add the other ingredients up through the cottage cheese. Add the ½lb of flour at little at a time until the mixture gets thick and can kneaded but don’t knead it very much, then roll out the dough ¼-inch thick. Cut into 2-inch square dumplings. Once that is done, immerse them in boiling water for ten minutes. Take the dumplings out and brush with melted butter, then sprinkle a mixture of cinnamon and sugar over them. Dumplings are easy to make and can be kneaded but a few rules have to be remembered to avoid having them fall apart in the boiling water. Mix all the ingredients well. Stiff dough works best, and boil one dumpling first to test the water temperature and your dough. A rolling boil will sometimes disintegrate the dumpling. To test the dumplings after boiling, cut one in half. It should be dry and firm inside. You are using self-raising flour so expect the dumplings to about double in thickness. When done, take them out of the boiling water, drain the water off, and serve. The same basic recipe can be used to make cottage cheese noodles. Use all-purpose flour instead of self-raising and only one egg. You can let these noodles dry out and use them later in any recipe that calls for them. Some of these recipes have butter as an ingredient but for us, real butter was a commodity that had vanished by late 1943. Our butter ration cards got us margarine that came in bricks that weighed about a pound. It was so hard you could not spread it and it smelled like gun oil and if you tried to fry anything in it, the result smelled like gun oil as well. Actually, I think the oil we used on the quads smelled better.

Modern Pannas (Scrapple)

2-3lbs (900-1,250g) of beef bones

A few ounces of sausage of any variety, if available, or chopped raw vegetables of your choice

1lb (450g) grits

2oz (50g) cornflour

Parsley and celery

1 small onion, finely chopped

Salt, pepper, and most important, you need the spice lovage

1 egg

Put the bones in a saucepan big enough to hold them and add salted water (about one teaspoon of salt per pint of water) to just cover the bones. Boil them for at least an hour and then take the bones out. Mix the grits, parsley, sausage (or chopped vegetables) and onion into the saucepan and boil until the grits are done. In a separate bowl, mix the cornflour with enough water to make a thick paste and add to the mixture. Add the lovage and the egg and boil for a few more minutes then pour into a bread tin and let cool. When cool, put the loaf in a refrigerator overnight. You can slice it and fry it until brown or just serve as it is. You cannot keep it for long even in a refrigerator. In cold winters, we froze it outside. Sometimes the temperature in January went down to -40°C. The Pannas we got during the war and shortly after had ground barley, stale bread and God knows what else in it, maybe roof rabbit, but nobody complained. I’ve not been able to find a grocery that sells lovage root but Liebstöckel is available and will work just fine as a substitute.

Turnips in Bread

A 2lb (900kg) loaf of black bread

4 turnips (rutabagas)

2 strips of bacon or 6oz (150g) ground beef

1 egg, lightly beaten

1 small sprig of parsley, chopped

1 onion

1 potato

1 tablespoon self-raising flour

Salt and pepper to taste

The black bread crust was hard as a brick during the war. If you wanted a piece you had to saw a slice off or use a special mechanical bread cutter that was also used to cut tobacco. To make this recipe, we sawed the loaf in half longways and scooped out the (somewhat) softer inner portion for making bread soup later.

Peel the potato, turnips and onion and dice into small pieces. Boil in salted water until soft. Pour off the water and add the egg, parsley, pepper and other spices if you have them. Nutmeg is also good in this recipe. Mash the ingredients together until it is all mixed well and then add the flour if the mixture is too thin; otherwise, leave it out. Stuff the mixture into both halves of black bread and put back together. You can use a skewer to hold the halves together, or if you originally cut the loaf longways, just put the top half back on. Put the bacon strips or ground beef into the bottom of a bread baking pan the size of your loaf and the turnip bread on top. Bake for 20-30 minutes on medium heat. The moisture of the ingredients will soften the crust of the black bread somewhat. When done, slice and serve hot or fry in cooking oil the next day. A loaf of today’s rye bread works well for this recipe. Our turnip bread was delicious, worms or not.

Another very simple way of preparing turnips was to mash them after cooking and add a handful of raisins and a spoonful of sugar. This was most often spread on slices of bread and eaten as a sandwich. Turnips can also be fried after being mashed, like potatoes. We used turnips in most recipes that called for potatoes if we didn’t have any. Mashed potatoes with raisins and sugar would be good to try today.

Now here is the recipe for cabbit stew we made for thirty-one people, and if you don’t like rabbit, pork will do, or even chicken.

Rabbit and Carrot Stew

20lbs (9kg) washed and grated carrots

1 large skinned and gutted rabbit, cut up into small pieces

1lb (450g) fat, butter or margarine

5lbs (2.25kg) cooked rice; if no rice is available, tapioca will do

5 eggs lightly beaten or 1lb (450g) of powdered egg

5lbs (2.25kg) potatoes

½lb (225g) sugar

Salt, pepper and parsley in proportion to the ingredients

Grate carrots and put into a large casserole pan with the fat (butter or margarine) and sauté for five minutes on medium heat. Add the cooked rice or tapioca and continue cooking for another five minutes.

Meanwhile, enough water has to be boiling to make stew for thirty-one men. About four gallons (15 litres) should be sufficient. Into the boiling water, add the cut up potatoes, the rabbit and the spices. This has to boil for at least 90 minutes. After that time, add the contents of the casserole pan and simmer for another 30 minutes. Just before serving, add the eggs slowly and boil for another few minutes until they are cooked. Other spices can be added at this time if desired.

Tomato Soup

16oz (400g) tomato puree

1 onion, chopped

1 stick of leek, chopped

8oz (200g) of quick rice, elbow macaroni or tapioca

1 bouillon cube

1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Bring a quart (1 litre) of water to boil and add the chopped onion, the cut-up leek, the bouillon cube and the parsley. Allow this to come back to boil and add the rice or macaroni, and boil until soft. Do not drain the water after boiling, but add the tomato puree and stir well into the mixture. If the soup is too watery, a teaspoon of cornflour mixed with a bit of cold water and added to the boiling mixture will thicken it. Add pepper and salt and any other mixed spices to your taste. If you want the full effect of the war, serve outside with your lawn mower running full blast under the dining table.

Red Cabbage

Red cabbage is served today in many restaurants as a side dish and it’s mostly cooked to bits and without taste, but for us, it was often the main course so it was important how it was cooked. With red cabbage dishes, one has to know the right ingredients, otherwise it is pretty bland. Red cabbage must be shredded before you boil it. It should be boiled on a low heat with a diced apple and a tablespoon of vinegar, a teaspoon of sugar, a bay leaf or two and salt to taste. All this has to boil for at least an hour, so it’s not for the fast food lover, but it is well worth the wait. This is for about 2lbs (900g) of red cabbage. After it has cooked and the cabbage is soft, drain off the water. In a separate bowl, mix a teaspoon of cornflour with a cup of water and pour over the cabbage. Let the cabbage come to a boil once again and it’s done. If you want to make the cabbage a bit tastier, you can cut up a slice of bacon into small pieces, fry it until brown and then add chopped onion and let it cook together for a few minutes, then pour the bacon, onions, and the grease over the cabbage and mix together. It can be served with mashed or boiled potatoes, Schnitzel or pork chops, or just eaten by itself.

Pease Pudding

1lb (450g) dried peas

2oz (50g) butter or margarine

1 onion

Parsley or celery

Salt and pepper to taste

The dried peas have to be soaked in water for twenty-four hours then boiled on low heat until soft. This takes a couple of hours or more. Place the boiled peas in a sieve and mash them through with a large wooden spoon to separate the outer tough skin from the soft inner portion and drain any water away. Melt the butter and chop the onion into small pieces and add it to the butter in a frying pan. Stir until the onions are soft, not fried, and then add the strained peas. Heat until warm and it’s done. Pease pudding is best served with sauerkraut or mashed potatoes. The same recipe will work with almost any beans.

In late summer, we had plenty of fruit and could make our own preserves, but without adequate sugar, the jam did not set nor could you keep it for long. So we had apple butter sandwiches, apple soup, apple roast, and the surviving rabbits had their fill of apples. As an example, here is a recipe for apple soup as we made it. We never peeled the apples, but we did cut the core out.

Apple Soup, á la 1946

2 large cooking apples, cored and cubed

½lb (225g) of hard black, rye or pumpernickel bread

4oz (100g) sugar

Pinch of cinnamon

2oz (50g) raisins or sultanas

Soak the bread in water for 30 minutes. Then bring a quart of water to boil, add the cubed apples and the raisins. Boil for about 10 minutes and then add the sugar. Lastly squeeze the water out of the bread, add it to the boiling stew and stir for a few minutes. We ate it hot or like pudding when it got cold and set to a paste.

Gemüse (Vegetable) Soup

1oz (25g) of margarine

1 small piece of celery root (celeriac, knob celery)

1 kohlrabi

1 carrot

1 parsley root (Hamburg parsley, Heimischer, similar to parsnip)

1 sprig of green parsley

1 onion

1 stick of leek

The inside white flesh of a cabbage or cauliflower

Salt and pepper to taste

Chop all the ingredients into small pieces and stir fry in the margarine for 8-10 minutes on low heat. Pour into another pan containing a quart of water at boil. Add spices. A bouillon cube can be added if available. Boil for an hour on low heat. Strain through a sieve and pour into a jar. Refrigerate until consumed as a drink. The strained residue can be used in stews or added to bread dough before baking.

Weed Soup

2oz (50g) margarine or butter

2 tablespoons olive oil

2oz (50g) all-purpose flour or quick rice

1 egg, lightly beaten

2 tablespoons sour cream

1 onion, chopped

3 tablespoons of Ground Ivy, Masterwort, Dandelion, or any of the other edible weeds mentioned earlier, chopped very fine. We used a pair of scissors to cut them up.

Put the chopped weeds into a frying pan, add the olive oil and the margarine (or butter) and cook for 5-7 minutes on medium heat until brown. Pour into saucepan, add 2-3 cups of water and bring to a boil. If you are using flour, mix it in a cup with cold water, and then add to the boiling water. If you are using rice, just add it to the boiling water. Boil for 15-20 minutes. Add spices such as lovage, salt, and pepper to taste. Add egg and stir into mixture until cooked. Stir in the sour cream and remove from the heat. For vegetarians, this is surely a change from the usual fare.

Another dish we made was Sauerampfer (Rumex acetosa, Sorrel, Spinach Dock) stew. It’s a weed that grows abundantly in roadside ditches or meadows but do not use the flowers or the stems as they are very bitter. We only used the leaves. It can be eaten raw, and it has a somewhat sour taste that we liked. My mother had several recipes using this flavourful weed. Two good handfuls of Sauerampfer are enough for four people.

Sauerampfer

This Sauerampfer dish was made often and it is very simple. Wash the Sauerampfer and put it into a frying pan with a heaped teaspoon of butter or margarine and stir fry until the leaves are soft but not mushy. Transfer to a saucepan and cover the Sauerampfer with water that has had a bouillon cube dissolved in it. Add three diced potatoes and boil for 30 minutes. Crack an egg and beat it in a cup with a tablespoon of the hot Sauerampfer mix. When the potatoes are done, stir the egg mixture into the saucepan and let simmer for five minutes. Add salt, pepper, and some ground cloves and a pinch of sage and it’s ready to eat. Carrots can also be added with the potatoes along with any dried vegetables for a little extra flavour.

Sauerampfersalat can be prepared like ordinary lettuce salad, but because of the slightly sour taste, we made a salad dressing of melted butter, margarine, or olive oil mixed with a teaspoon of sugar. The dressing also keeps the leaves from sticking together in a clump.

Sauerampfer Omelette

1 handful of Sauerampfer, washed and cut into small pieces

4 eggs

Grated cheese of your choice

Curry powder, Estragon (tarragon), salt, and pepper

This omelette is best made in a cast iron frying pan. Prepare the omelette as any other but beforehand, fry the Sauerampfer in a small amount of oil or butter and then add the beaten egg. Mix in the curry powder and estragon before cooking and add the grated cheese when the omelette is almost done.

Sauerampfer Pancakes

1 handful of washed Sauerampfer leaves

4oz (100g) butter, margarine or olive oil

4oz (100g) mushrooms

3 tablespoons white wine

2 teaspoons cornflour

3 eggs

½ cup fat-free milk (our milk was mostly fat-free anyway)

Salt and pepper to taste

Cut the Sauerampfer with scissors into thin strips and fry a few minutes in butter and put aside for later use. Slice the mushrooms and fry in a bit of butter or oil until they are light brown, then add the white wine and simmer on low heat. Mix a teaspoon of cornflour with a bit of water and add to the simmering mushrooms and boil the mixture for two minutes. Beat the three eggs with the milk and the rest of the cornflour and add salt, pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg and pour into a cast-iron frying pan. Lay the Sauerampfer on top and slowly fry until the cake is firm but not hard. Cover the cake with your prepared mushrooms and continue frying for a few minutes and it’s ready to eat.

We also cooked Blutwurst with Sauerampfer, but this sausage is hard to find here in the United States. There are several German sources for it and most will ship anywhere. For those who want to try making it themselves, I have a good recipe but it is not for the squeamish. One first needs to know a butcher who can get the main ingredient for you, blood from a freshly-slaughtered pig. The sausage has to be made immediately with the fresh blood before it begins to decompose. There’s no great effort required, but preparations made beforehand will pay off in the end, so collect all the ingredients before you go to the butcher.

Blutwurst

To make 2-3lbs (900-1,350g) of Blutwurst, you need, in addition to the pig blood, a half-pound of fresh bacon (not smoked), a cup of grits, rye flour or ground oats, and spices. Cut the bacon into very small pieces and put in a pan on medium heat. Add the grits and mix with water into a thin paste. Put a quart of the blood in a saucepan and bring to a rolling boil. Add the bacon and grits mixture and spices (salt, pepper and garlic powder). Boil for another 10 minutes or until the mixture thickens. Turn off the heat and pour this mixture into small glass jars with sealable lids. Put the jars into a boiling water bath for five minutes and then seal the jars with the lids. Let stand until cool and then refrigerate. That’s all there is to it. A can of Blutwurst costs about $4 for 6oz (150g), plus shipping, but you can make your own for about a dollar a can. There is also the advantage of having the Blutwurst preserved in jars; it will keep for years. Fry a few slices with a beaten egg and garnish with Sauerampfer and you have a delicious meal. If you don’t want to preserve the Blutwurst, just pour the mixture into a stone crock and refrigerate, but it must be eaten within a week or so. Liver sausage can be made the same way by running the liver through a meat grinder and adding water mixed with a bouillon cube. Homemade liver sausage is coarser than the pudding-style Braunschweiger from the supermarket and tastes much better.

Although I have scores of Sauerampfer recipes, this Second World War hors d’oeuvres recipe is especially good.

Sauerampfer hors d’oeuvres

½lb (225g) of butter or margarine, salted or unsalted

½lb (225g) cottage cheese

1 teaspoon chopped fresh garlic

1 bunch of parsley

Sprig of dill

1 tablespoon chopped chives

A few Sauerampfer leaves

A sprig of Pimpinelle (Sanguisorba minor, Rosaceae). If your shop doesn’t have Pimpinelle, use a few cut-up slices of peeled cucumber.

Make sure the butter is at room temperature for better mixing and cut all herbs into small pieces; I use scissors. Mix everything into the cottage cheese and add salt and pepper to taste. Roll into inch-diameter balls. Serve on crackers or on pieces of toast. You can also add a half teaspoon of tomato puree to the mixture before rolling into balls for a little different taste.

Rum Fordsche Soup

8oz (200g) whole grain barley

1 stick of leek, chopped

3 potatoes, cubed

2 bread rolls, the older and harder the better

6 cups water

Salt and pepper to taste

Boil the barley for at least 1½ hours and add more water to keep the level about the same. After the boiling time, add the cut-up leek and potato cubes, salt, and pepper and boil until the potatoes are soft. Finally add the two bread rolls. They will soften and mix with the rest of the ingredients. That’s all there is to it. This dish was also a staple for most POWs.

Frühling (spring) soup is made from a variety of spring vegetables, including spinach, asparagus, and early beans, cooked together for an hour. A handful of weeds of some variety was often added when there weren’t enough vegetables. When done, tomato slices can be added to the hot soup before serving.

Spinach Soup

2oz (50g) butter or margarine

1 onion

2 tablespoons dried herbs (parsley, celery, chives)

8oz (200g) fresh spinach

2oz (50g) breadcrumbs

1 bread roll or 2 slices white bread

2 hard-boiled eggs

4 cups water

Cut up spinach and onion and put into frying pan with butter or margarine and let it wilt for a few minutes, add half of the water, the breadcrumbs and herbs, boil for 20 minutes, add more of the water if the soup thickens too fast. Slice the bread roll or use the two slices of white bread, and toast in the oven to golden brown, then cut into inch squares. Add the toasted bread to the soup mixture. Peel the two hard-boiled eggs and slice them; add them to the soup and it’s done. Add salt, pepper, and a pinch of paprika if you want. This soup can also be made using leftover vegetables (cabbage, kale, cauliflower) and with frozen vegetables.

Noodle Dough

½lb (225g) all-purpose flour

2 eggs

¼ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons water

Break the two eggs into a cup, add the salt and water and beat lightly. Add this to the flour slowly and knead into a dough that can be rolled out. It has to be rolled very thin. Cut into ½-inch strips 4 inches long. Place on trays or paper and put outside in the sun. They should be dried until hard. They can then be put into bags and stored.

One of our favourite pasta dishes was called Maultaschen (mouth pockets or mouth bags). The dough is prepared the same as for noodles, rolled out thin and then cut into 4 x 4 inch squares. Then a teaspoon of minced leftover vegetables or whatever’s available is placed in the square. One edge of the square is then folded over to make a triangular pocket. The folded edges are then pressed together to form a seal. The pockets are then dried in the sun for a few hours only. To cook the Maultaschen, the pockets should be boiled in water containing a little salt and pepper for about 10 minutes. Any leftovers can be served cold in a salad or mixed with tomato puree or mayonnaise. Our homemade noodles were used in a variety of ways and since we always had apples in late summer, my mother came up with a recipe for apple noodles.

Apple Noodles

1lb (450g) cooking apples (firm apples)

½lb (225g) noodles

4oz (100g) sugar

1 lemon peel, diced

1oz (25g) unsalted butter

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Boil the noodles until soft and drain off the water. Peel and cut apples into small pieces and place in a pan with the butter and lemon peel. Add a cup of water and cook on medium heat for 8-10 minutes or until the apples are beginning to soften. Add the noodles, cinnamon, and sugar and mix well. We used plums at times too, but cherries didn’t work well. Noodle salad can be made like potato salad and an added cut-up tomato or tomato puree gives it a nice flavour. Sometimes, when we had a can of corned beef from the GIs, we cooked the noodles, drained the water and added the corned beef, some chopped parsley and tomato puree. It was sort of spaghetti with meat sauce I guess.

We tried many drinks, even milk lemonade with a spoonful of schnapps, but I wouldn’t recommend it. However, one cheap summer drink we made that I can recommend was elderflower champagne. I still make it today.

Elderflower Champagne

2-3 heads of elderflower in full bloom

2lbs (900kg) sugar

2 tablespoon white vinegar

1 gallon (4.5 litres) of cold water

1 lemon

Pick the flower heads when they are in full bloom and put into a ceramic or plastic bowl and add the lemon juice. Scrape the outside of the lemon (the zest) and add that to the bowl as well. Add the sugar and the vinegar and mix thoroughly. Add the cold water and let the mixture stand for twenty-four hours. Strain the mixture and fill your bottles. The screw-top water bottles work well. Only fill the bottles three-quarters full and collapse them before adding the screw top. This allows gasses to expand the bottle during fermentation. Lay the bottles on their sides and store in a cool place. The elderflower champagne is ready to drink in two weeks. If you bottle this in glass bottles, you need a valve, similar to those used in winemaking to allow the gasses to escape.

Making sweets and cookies had to be planned well in advance. Some of the ingredients weren’t easy to come by, but Mum always managed to have something for us, especially at Christmastime.

Printen Cookies

¼lb (112g) butter or margarine

½lb (225g) Rübenkraut or Honey

½lb (225g) sugar

1 tablespoon of the mixed spices given above

1 teaspoon cocoa

1lb (450g) self-raising flour, or plain with a teaspoon of baking powder

1 egg

1 dash of salt

Mix the butter, honey (or Rübenkraut), sugar, spices, and cocoa in a bowl then transfer to a pan and heat slowly while continuing to stir. When everything has melted together, remove from heat and allow to cool for several minutes. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, egg, and salt, then knead in the warm melted ingredients from the pan. It will be sticky, but just keep kneading until everything is mixed well. Cover the dough with a towel and set aside for a day. Do not refrigerate. Roll out the dough on a floured countertop to a thickness of about a quarter inch and cut into strips about two inches wide and four inches long. Place on a cookie sheet and bake on medium/high heat until golden brown. When done, the Printen can be iced with whatever you like. We used a sugar/water paste. Let the Printen cool in open air and try not to eat them for a day or two. They have to mature or they will be soft and soggy.

Spekulatius Cookies

1lb (450g) self-raising flour

½lb (225g) of sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla sugar or a couple of drops of vanilla essence

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 egg, beaten lightly

6oz (150g) of softened unsalted butter

A small amount of ground cloves (maybe ¼ teaspoon)

3 tablespoons of whole milk

Put the flour into a large bowl and then add the rest of the ingredients except the butter and the egg and mix well. Add butter in small amounts and mix. This will make a stiff dough that should then be kneaded thoroughly. Roll out a fist sized ball of dough at a time on a floured tabletop to a thickness of about ⅛ inch and use your favourite Christmas cookie cutters to cut out the cookies. Place on a greased cookie sheet and brush each cookie with the beaten egg, then bake on medium heat for 15-20 minutes or until they are brown. You can leave them in the oven a little longer if you like hard crunchy cookies. Check on the progress often. We didn’t have much in the way of temperature regulation in our wood-fired oven. The cookies burned easily, but we ate them anyway. You can add whatever kind of sugar decoration you want but don’t go overboard. It is the taste of the cookie you want, not just the sugar. Let the cookies cool before eating if you can wait that long. We used two baking trays so we could put a new one in the oven as soon as one batch was done. Cookies were made whenever the oven was not being used for something else in the two weeks leading up to Christmas. Of course we didn’t have self-raising flour and had to add our own baking powder, but today’s self-raising flour works just as well or better.

Another favourite was Christmas Pfefferkuchen Cookies. If that sounds like pepper cookies to you, I can assure you there is no pepper in these cookies. I have no idea how they got the name, but they are great Christmas cookies and this is the modern way to make them. Instead of the instant pudding mix, we used Dutch cocoa, cornflour, sugar, milk, and a little salt.

Pfefferkuchen Cookies

½lb (225g) self-raising flour

1 packet of powdered instant chocolate pudding mix

½lb (225g) sugar

4oz (100g) of honey or sweet molasses

1 egg

4-5 tablespoons whole milk

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon and cloves

3oz (75g) softened unsalted butter

3oz (75g) ground almonds or other nuts

Mix the instant pudding with the flour and the ground almonds or nuts, and then add sugar and mix again. Yes, we had instant pudding during the war, but you had to mix it with milk and sugar and cook it - if you had milk and sugar. Mostly Mum found other things to do with it. I don’t know what was in it, but it seems to be about the same as the instant pudding mix you can buy today. Warm the honey or molasses and add the cinnamon, cloves, butter milk and egg to it and mix thoroughly. Add this to the flour, nuts and sugar mixture slowly and mix. Knead thoroughly and if the dough is a little soft, let it stand for 15 minutes and try again; then proceed as with the Spekulatius cookies for baking. You can decorate with sugar and additional ground nuts if you want, but they are good just as they are.

No German Christmas is completed without a Christstollen and in some specialty bakeries you can buy them ready-made well before Christmas, even here in America. There is a Polish version called Potica that is similar and it can also be found here occasionally. A proper stollen has to mature, like a good wine, and we used to make ours at the end of November through the beginning of December. To make your own is more adventurous and it surely tastes better too. There are several varieties, even a rum stollen using real rum, but you won’t get drunk from eating it. The alcohol evaporates during baking, but you will have a nice rum-flavoured stollen. Here I will describe the simple stollen and if you want to make rum stollen, use less milk and add a dash of rum.

Christstollen (Fruitcake)

4oz (100g) of shortening

4oz (100g) softened unsalted butter

6oz (150g) sugar

1 egg, lightly beaten

1lb (450g) self-raising flour

¾ cup of milk

5oz (125g) raisins

2oz (50g) sultanas

2oz (50g) ground almonds or other nuts

½ teaspoon lemon extract

Melt the shortening and butter together on low heat. Add the egg, sugar, and lemon extract and mix this well. Then add half the flour with a bit of the milk; more flour and milk as you continue mixing. Lastly, add the ground nuts, raisins, and sultanas. Knead the dough thoroughly until stiff and roll into a loaf. You can get creative here and make a long loaf and coil it up if you want. Baking time with medium heat is 1 to 1½ hours. When the stollen is golden brown, remove it from the oven and brush it with butter and cover with icing sugar. You should store the stollen in a cool dry place. At Christmas you can decorate the result with green holly and candles.

Since I came to the US, my wife, who was born and raised in the mountains of Tennessee, has learned German cooking and baking from my mother’s recipes. She can now make anything from a Christstollen to Sauerbraten as good as my mother used to. She has become an expert in cooking red cabbage and her Apfeltaschen (apple pockets) are better than the ones you buy today in bakeries in Germany. These are easy to make and I bet your first try will be a success. We had them whenever we had all the ingredients, but a few apples were always saved so we could make them at Christmastime.

Apfeltaschen (Apple Pockets)

8oz (200g) self-raising flour

8oz (200g) cottage cheese

3oz (75g) sugar

6oz (150g) softened salted butter

1 egg, lightly beaten

A few drops of vanilla essence

1lb (450g) cooking apples but you can use apple butter or cooked dried apples. If you use fresh apples, peel and boil them, add some sugar to taste and mash the cooked apples. If you use dried apples, cook them with a little water and sugar until soft and sweet.

The above ingredients (except the apples) are mixed into a dough and kneaded thoroughly. The dough is then rolled out on a floured surface to a thickness of about a quarter of an inch. With a saucer and knife, cut the dough into circles. Put a tablespoon of the apples in the centre. You can even add raisins at this point if you want. Then fold over and seal by pressing the edges together to form a half moon shaped pocket. Brush the tops with the beaten egg.

Bake for 20 minutes on a medium to high heat. After baking you can cover the Apfeltaschen with icing sugar if you want. We use any apples; it doesn’t matter whether the apples are the expensive ones from the grocery shop or those that fell from your neighbour’s tree. This recipe can also be used for coffee cakes but you cut the dough into small squares and fill with strawberry or peach preserves or even cooked pumpkin. Sugar was always rationed during the war so we usually used less than the recipe called for. At times we used syrup from sugar beets but the baked result is rather dark brown. Since coming to the Southern United States from Germany, I’ve also seen another version of the Apfeltaschen, but the dough is rolled out much thinner and they are fried in oil. They’re commonly called fried apple pies and they are also very good. Finding enough oil to fry anything was a problem during the war, so things were mostly baked or boiled.

A German tradition was, and still is, Kaffeetrinken am Sonntag (Sunday afternoon tea, or coffee). Tea in itself was never a favourite drink in Germany. They left that to the British, who knew more about tea than anyone else. This took place on Sunday afternoons around 4:00 p.m., but with acorn or barley roast, it was hardly enjoyable. Usually a sort of cake or flan was served and even during the worst food shortages, there was always some sort of cake that could be made. Making a Torte, as it was called, was the cheapest way for the housewife to present some sort of sweet dish on the Sunday table. It’s still made today and sold in any cake shop in Germany, but you can make it yourself, and the ingredients are better now than they were seventy years ago.

German Torte (Cake)

6oz (150g) self-raising flour

4oz (100g) sugar

4oz (100g) unsalted margarine or butter

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla sugar or ½ teaspoon vanilla extract added to the sugar

Simply mix all the ingredients and knead the dough for several minutes. We used to do it by hand, but there are electric kitchen utensils now that can do it for you. Roll the dough to a thickness of about ½-inch and put into a greased pie pan. We had a special Torte dish, but you can use any suitable pie pan. Bake for 20-30 minutes on medium heat. When done, tip the Torte out upside down and top with whatever fruit you like, from fresh to canned. When sugar was rationed, we sometimes used two or three saccharin tablets diluted in a bit of hot water in place of the sugar. The Torte was sort of bitter-sweet but still it was better than no cake at all. If you want to be imaginative, add a handful of raisins to the flour before mixing. We never had a raisin shortage during the war; there were plenty of grapes growing all over southern Germany.

Not all ersatz food was bad. We had an ersatz recipe for cookies when none were to be found that was really very good. It was called Falsches Alpenbrot or fake Alpinebread. It was a replacement for the well-known Bavarian cookie of the same name. I haven’t made any since right after the war, but it’s worth a try. We used unsliced black bread in those days, but I think modern white bread would produce better results.

Falsches Alpenbrot (Fake Applebread)

6 slices of thick white bread

1 heaping tablespoon of cocoa

8oz (200g) sugar

4oz (100g) softened salted butter

A pinch each of cinnamon and ground cloves

Dice the bread slices into 1-inch squares. Put them on a baking tray and very slowly let them bake. Turn them often until they are deep brown. Remove from oven and let them dry out for a day. After that, usually the next day, melt the butter over low heat and stir in the sugar and cocoa. Mix well or it will become lumpy. Add the spices and keep stirring. Take the pan off the heat and pour your bread squares into the pan. Let them soak for about 30 minutes then take them out one by one and put on a tray. Let them sit for a day or two and they are ready to serve. They are really good as a dessert covered with vanilla pudding or wrapped in gold or silver foil and hung on the tree at Christmastime.

Some of Mother’s recipes mention vanilla sugar. This does not grow in nature of course and it’s hard to find in shops but you can make your own easily. All you need is sugar and a few vanilla pods, which are available in good groceries. Put two or three vanilla pods in a glass jar then pour a pound of sugar over it. You can also use icing sugar. Put a lid on the jar and store in your cupboard. Shake the jar once a week. The longer it stands, the better the vanilla sugar. One teaspoonful for recipes that call for a pound of flour is sufficient. My mother did the same with cinnamon; two teaspoons of ground cinnamon to a pound of sugar. It was great sprinkled over rice pudding.