I’m not sayin’ they’re good, necessarily … but they are remarkable.
More old-fashioned weirdness in our second installment of From Danish Kitchens.
Let’s start out with some soup.
How many ways can you say, “Soak some old bread and cook it”? Ooh, but you can do bread soup or beer soup. How nice.
Gee, if only you could do a soup with bread and beer …
Gee, isn’t that neat.
But wait. Does it matter what kind of beer I use?
I can see the conversation now. I go up to the 22-year-old cashier at the convenience store and ask whether Bud or Miller is more appropriate for making bread soup.
Now that we’ve finished with the soup course, let’s see what we’ve got in the way of meat … Hmm, head cheese, fish pudding with mushroom sauce (no kidding, I’ll show that one next time) … ah, how about this one. A tip for keeping leftover sausage.
That scan is pretty good, but just in case you can’t read it:
Add 1/2 cup vinegar and 1/4 cup salt to six cups broth. Pour over sausages, cover with melted lard and cool. Broth will jell and sausages will keep an indefinite length of time in a cool place.
That’s right, pour lard over sausage and leave it out indefinitely.
Hey, maybe this book ain’t so bad after all.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
Subscribe to comments on this post
18 Comments
You laugh, but covering meat with fat DOES keep it good indefinitely. Seals out the air. That was pretty common before refrigeration. Some people still keep peppers this way (covered in olive oil). Maybe THAT’S what I should have done with all the lamb–then I’d have space in my freezer for more important things. Like ice cream.
But beer soup? No, thanks. I’ll just take the beer straight.
I’m putting my money on neither Miller or Budweiser for the beer soup. Given the age of the recipe and being Danish, a good dark beer is probably the best. I’m just guessing here.
Kristin, if you had done that with the lamb, would A have thought you were being clever, or crazy? How about the MiL?
Soulmotor, gosh you think so? I was thinking about making some of this with Busch Light. Maybe I shouldn’t.[end sarcasm]
How frightening and amusing. I was intrigued by beer soup at first, then took a closer look at the ingredients.
Yeah, now I’m actually pretty tempted to try some of the bread soup just to see what the big deal is. Maybe we’ve hit on a great way to use up those last crusts of bread that always seem to go stale!
Check out duck confit for some thing preserved in its own fat. It makes for a great meal roasted, with some potatoes roasted in that tasty duck fat. Mmm!
I wonder what is the right beer for beer soup!? I might ask at the local Tesco while I am there, sure they will know.
Tesco is like the WalMart of English grocery stores, right? Just checking that I’m reading that with the appropriate level of snark.
Stephanie, step away from the keyboard and back away slowly. If anything on that page makes you think, “Yeah, I’d try that,” you’ve been online too long. You need to spend some time in the big blue room.
Bob, maybe you can explain it to her?
Oh my goodness- I just browsed several months of your blog (and I drooled a bit… okay, a lot). My friend sent me the link on AIM and I looked over your blog as we typed back and forth, exclaiming about your recipes.
These recipes remind me of my husband’s cooking- and he’s a real pro, his mama taught him well, and I’m doing much better than I was when we wed, but I’ll never compare to him. But maybe I can fool him if I grab some of these recipes and tweak them to our tastes.
Thanks!
Always glad to hear about other guys who cook. Sometimes I feel like the only one.
Bread Soup? Sounds like a “Great Depression” Era recipe. Dont laugh we might be needing more recipes like these with the state of the worlds economic crisis. I would love to know the cook book’s date of publication
It’s copyright 1941, and the intro says the recipes were from the old country. So yeah, probably a bunch of depression-era stuff. And my but aren’t we a pessimist today.
I’m danish and yes I’ve had the bread soups, and they’re ok. However, my eye was caught by the Medisterpølse recipe reference. Could you please post that recipe? I’m always looking for another sausage recipe. They are yummy and well worth the effort to make. And pouring the fat over them was a valid method of keeping them edible.
Anon, I just posted the Medisterpølse recipe on the forum.
Thank you so much for the recipe. It sounds like the one my mom used to make. And aren’t the recipes wonderful in that they don’t mention some of the important stuff, like browning it in margarine and butter. I totally agree with you, margarine is evil, and I never, ever buy it. Butter is good on the other hand.
The beer soups and bread soups look all right to me. The bread would make it nice and thick (creamy soup on a budget), or you could make a nice dumpling. Beer adds a tremendous amount of flavor to soups. I wouldn't want beer soup fro breakfast though.
My mother's German cookbook (1981) calls for a pale beer in its Englische Biersuppe (English beer soup), as well as a number of spices and an egg yolk, but no bread.
Sarah, I didn't know I could speak German, but I saw "Englische Biersuppe" and something told me it was English beer soup!
You'd be amazed what I've had to translate when I talk about something German.
I was really looking for beer bread variations. Basic is 3 cups of self-rising flour and a 12 ounce beer. I like adding sugar, but I think this recipe would handle many variations quite well.