This recipe is a modern attempt to recreate a dish typical for most German tables in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Known in standard German as Wurstbrühe or “Sausage Soup,” the soup was prepared using the leftover broth from sausage cooking. On feast days, in particular, giant pots would be made of this soup and then served to the community. Even until the 1950s, sausage broth was available at most butcher shops. Today though, this dish remains alive primarily in Swabia and the Upper Rhine. This recipe is a hearty meat stew from Baden, attempting to recreate the traditional flavors.
Sausage Broth Soup (Badischer Metzelsuppe)
This recipe from Baden for Metzelsuppe or Sausage Soup is a hearty meat stew made with sausage broth. It's flavored with dried fruit and rich spices and would have been traditionally served during community festivals.
Servings: 4
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp Pork Fat for frying
- 800 g Sauerkraut
- 150 g Dried Plums and Pears
- 3 tbsp Sugar
- ½ tsp Cinnamon
- 800 ml Sausage Broth Sausage broth is essentially a weak meat broth with spices leftover from the sausage production. You can substitute with any broth, including vegetable broth.
- 4-6 Cooked Sausages e.g. a cooked bratwurst, white sausage, Bologney/Lyoner, Liverwurst or Saumagen
- 500 g Boiled Porkbelly "Kesselfleisch" These were leftover meats from sausage production, and so traditionally included lots of stuff we don't really want to eat. We will use pork belly here to imitate the flavors.
- 25 g Flour
- 25 g Butter
- Salt How much depends on the salinity of the broth you are using.
Instructions
- If you have raw pork belly, boil it in broth for about an hour, slice it into 1cm strips, and then set it aside.
- Start by rinsing the sauerkraut briefly under tap water and chopping the dried fruit into small chunks.
- In a soup pot, fry the sauerkraut in the pork fat for a few minutes, then add the fruit, sugar, cinnamon, and broth. Bring the pot to a boil and let everything simmer for 25 minutes.
- Now add the cooked sausages and pork belly, and let simmer for another 10 minutes.
- In a small bowl, mix the butter and flour together until they form a homogenous mass. Add this to the soup as a thickening agent, and stir until it has completely dissolved.
- Serve with one sausage per bowl.