The soup chapter, translated from Fraktur
This cookbook was a 1956 wedding gift to my mother. She's gone now — but her recipes aren't. The soups chapter of Bayerisches Kochbuch is where a Bavarian kitchen actually started: a clear broth, a pot of bones, a handful of roots. I translated ten of those recipes by hand from the old Fraktur typeface she could read and I cannot.
Each dish in this 1956 Bavarian cookbook PDF has a headnote, historical context, US-adapted measurements, and a week-of-meals grid. Instant digital download on Etsy — no physical book is shipped.
This is the recipe that Americans stare at. Cold soup. Made from fruit. Served before a meal, not after. Yes. This is what it is, and it is very good, and Maria Hofmann puts it in the soup chapter without any sense that an explanation is required, because in Bavaria in 1956 it needed none.
My mother made this in summer, when stone fruit was cheap and the kitchen was too hot to cook properly. Cold plum soup. Cold cherry soup with a little cream stirred in. She served it in the small glasses she kept for schnapps and told us to drink it slowly. It is a first course. It is not a dessert. The distinction mattered to her.
The ten recipes
- Clear Beef Broth (Fleischbrühe)
- Bone Broth (Knochenbrühe)
- Root Vegetable Broth (Wurzelbrühe)
- Bavarian Tomato Soup (Tomatensuppe)
- Dried Mushroom Soup (Pilzsuppe)
- Lentil, Pea & Bean Soup (Hülsenfruchtsuppe)
- Bavarian Potato Soup (Kartoffelsuppe)
- Black Bread Soup (Brotsuppe)
- Semolina Dumpling Soup (Grießnockerlsuppe)
- Cold Fruit Soup (Fruchtsuppe)
Full recipes — ingredients, method, historical headnotes, and a week-of-meals grid — in the Soups, Vol. 1 PDF on Etsy. Instant PDF download. No physical book is shipped.
26th edition · Birken-Verlag, Munich · 1956
Originally given to Erna Paul as a wedding gift.
Written in printed Fraktur typeface. Translated by E. Paul.
