This morning, I read a comment on a culinary writing group that people preferred printed cookbooks to online recipes because they did not cram ads into their pages and – well – they often used to. Just this weekend, I managed to pick up a remarkably late example of the type at a flea market. But to start at the beginning…
In the early 20th century, there was a great deal of concern over the fact that modern women could not properly cook or run a household, were refusing to have enough babies, and generally were not in line with their biological destiny. This was generally a very strange time, and especially so in Germany, so we should probably not be surprised if odd things cropped up even in very mainstream places. One such place was the Standesamt, the registry office where marriages and births were officially recorded. Starting in the 1920s, it became customary for every newlywed woman to be given a book on how to be a proper housewife – the Hausbuch für die Deutsche Familie.
Hausbuch is one of those terms that hard to translate adequately. Noble families had books that Hausbücher served as chronicles, collections of essential texts, and family heirlooms. But this was just a cheaply mass-produced collection of texts commissioned from experts on marriage, housekeeping, childrearing, and, centrally, cookery. It had been produced on the initiative of the association of registry officials to educate the regrettably modern women of their time, but of course actually giving away a copy to each bride was not something the state was going to afford. Tnere were more important things to spend money on, like war reparations, war debts, and preparations for the next war. The Standesbeamten thus came up with a different way of funding the production: advertising.
In each of these books, a number of pages were set aside for ads that local businesses could purchase. Since the intellectual property was free, the income from these funded the printing and the books could be given to every newlywed couple in the district, making sure the ads hit them just as they were facing the major expense of setting up a household together. It was a winning formula – so much so that it continued for almost a century, at least in West Germany, and in some more traditional places still does. I own three such books – two editions of the Hausbuch from 1936 and 1950 respectively, both from Kiel, and a less obtrusive Goldenes Kochbuch from 2013 produced in Hamburg.
Reading these is alternately fascinating and horrifying (in case you ever wanted to know what the Nazis thought was proper infant care), and it quickly makes it clear that family life was very much a political issue. But they are also an interesting resource for tracing the development of German cookery over the past 100-odd years. Frequent changes in marital law and less frequent ones in government outlook meant thy were regularly revised, and the opportunity always served to also update the recipe section. After the 1970s, the legal aspects vanished, leaving only tracts on housekeeping and cookery funded more or less lavishly by local businesses. With the rise of online ads, this source of funding is drying up and the last of Standesamtskochbücher are disappearing. This may be the last we see of them.
As an exercise in this, here are three recipes for Gulasch, a staple of 20th-century German cuisine that people here insist is as Hungarian as spaghetti bolognese is Italian (and they are probably right about that). In 1936, the Hausbuch had fairly terse instructions:
Gulasch
1 1/2 pounds of beef, 2 tablespoons fat, onion, salt, a little paprika, 1 tablespoon flour, 1 1/2 pounds potatoes
Quickly sautée the cubed meat together with the chopped onions in the fat. Dust with a little flour, deglaze, salt, add paprika, and then add the raw, cubed potatoes to the meat. Steam in a covered pot for 1/2 hour, season, serve.
I am, fairly sure this dish would have carried a prison sentence in Hungary, but the style is quite fitting for a political movement whose major publication arm gave us the memorable word Kochvorschrift for recipe. In 1950, the new edition gave:
Gulasch
1/2 – 3/4 kg beef, ample onions, a little fat, salt, paprika, 1/2 – 3/4 kg raw potatoes
Free the meat of skin and sinews, wash it, drain it well, and cube it coarsely. Sautée it well with a large quantity of onions, deglaze with a small amount of liquid, salt, add the paprika, and steam it very slowly in a covered pot. About 1/2 hour before serving, add the coarsely cubed potatoes and continue steaming. If you wish, you can bind the sauce (Tunke) with 1 spoonful of flour, but raw potatoes serve the same purpose.
All honour to domestic economy, but deciding raw potatoes will do just as well as flour to bind a sauce is one of those “tell me you lost a world war without telling me you lost a world war” moments. West Germany in 1950 may have ended food rationing (prematurely, many economists believed), but it was still a desperately poor country where many working families could barely afford meat and any serviceable thing was made to last. What a change from here to 2013, where both ingredients and instructions are available in abundance:
Beef Gulasch
Working time: 20 minutes. Cooking time: 90 minutes
1 kg beef, 500g onions, 120g pork lard, 40-50g sweet paprika, vinegar, meat broth or water, salt, 1 tbsp tomato concentrate, 1 tbsp Gulasch spice mixture (2 tsp marjoram, 1/4 tsp caraway, 1 small garlic clove, some lemon peel, all finely minced), 20g flour
Cut the meat into bite-sized cubes. Sautée the sliced onions in hot fat until they are golden brown, stirring continually. Add a heaping tablespoon of paprika and immediately deglaze with a small amount of meat broth or water that had a dash of vinegar added. Add the cubed meat, some salt, the tomato paste, and the Gulasch spices. Slowly simmer in a covered pot, stirring occasionally and adding hot liquid (meat broth or water) as needed. Once the meat is tender, add a little liquid, bring to a full boil, and season to taste. This Gulasch in its own juices (Natursaftgulasch) should be rusty brown. To produce a thicker sauce, dust the meat with flour before the final boiling, only then add the liquid and boil quickly.
This is still industrial cuisine, but there is art to it – and wealth. Note the absence of potatoes. You get to choose what, if any, carb you want with this Gulasch. I remember it being served with the kind of spiral noodles that have become visual shorthand for poverty, but it also goes with knödel, spaetzle, or indeed, potatoes. At this point in history, economising food is no longer a concern. Relearning the skill will not be easy for the next generation of Germans.