The vegetable dishes of a 1956 Bavarian kitchen, built on the roux
This cookbook was a 1956 wedding gift to my mother. She's gone now — but her recipes aren't. Volume 8 covers the Gemüsespeisen chapter of Bayerisches Kochbuch. The chapter opens with ten rules for handling vegetables: buy what's in season, never overcook, and save the cooking water for sauces. Most of the recipes then use one technique, the Einbrenne (a simple roux of fat and flour), loosened with the vegetable's own cooking water. It starts with asparagus and cauliflower in butter sauce, goes on to green beans, spinach, savoy cabbage, leeks and Brussels sprouts, then winter kale and dried mushrooms, and ends with pumpkin braised with onion and tomato.
Each recipe has its original German name and number from the book, two headnote paragraphs, a historical note, US measurements with metric equivalents, a step-by-step method and a five-day meal grid built around the dish. Instant PDF download on Etsy. No physical book.
The ten recipes
- Asparagus in Butter Sauce (Spargel in Buttersoße)
- Cauliflower in Butter Sauce (Blumenkohl in Buttersoße)
- Green Beans with Roux (Bohnen mit Einbrenne)
- Creamed Spinach (Spinat)
- Creamed Savoy Cabbage (Wirsing)
- Creamed Leeks (Lauchgemüse)
- Creamed Brussels Sprouts (Rosenkohl)
- Creamed Kale (Winterkohl oder Grünkohl)
- Creamed Mushrooms from Dried (Pilzgemüse von getrockneten Pilzen)
- Braised Pumpkin (Kürbisgemüse)
Full recipes, with ingredients, method, historical headnotes and a week-of-meals grid, are in the Vegetable Dishes, Vol. 8 PDF on Etsy. Instant PDF download. No physical book.
26th edition · Birken-Verlag, Munich · 1956
Originally given to Erna Paul as a wedding gift.
English edition by E. Paul.
Cover art and first-draft translations were made with AI tools; every recipe was then checked and edited by hand against the original 1956 pages.
