🇩🇪 Germany · Hamburg
Hamburger AalsuppeHamburg eel soup
A sweet-and-sour soup of Hamburg built on a meat stock with mixed dried fruit (prunes, apples, pears), vegetables and herbs, soured with vinegar and finished with dill; eel is optional, since no quantified recipe uses it.
Origin and history
Hamburger Aalsuppe is a Hamburg speciality that the city describes as a vegetable soup or stew set apart by its dried fruit. The oldest known recipe is in a Hamburg cookbook of 1788. Whether eel belonged to the original dish is disputed: critics call the fish a concession to visitors and the soup a dish where everything goes in where everything goes in. Alan Davidson places it in the tradition of the North German sweet-and-sour soup made in early summer.
Make it at home
- Makes
- 6 servings
- Total time
- 2 h 30 min
- Hands-on
- 45 min
Ingredients
- 150 g5 1/2 oz mixed dried fruit (Backobst), prunes, apples and pears; soaked overnight in cold water, drained
- 1 bunch Suppengrün (leek, carrot, celeriac, parsley), cleaned; about half cut into 1 cm (1/2 in) pieces, the peelings and parsley kept for the stock
- 1 kg2.2 lb smoked pork spare ribs (Schälrippchen), cut into large pieces
- 2 liters2 quarts clear meat broth
- 5 cloves
- 3 bay leaves
- 200 g7 oz green beans, washed and halved
- 200 g1 1/3 cups peas, frozen
- 2 tbsp white wine vinegar, to taste
- 1 pinch sugar
- 1 pinch nutmeg
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 4 stems dill, leaves picked
- 6 small eggs, fried sunny-side up in 2 tbsp oil, to serve
Method
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1. The day before, soak the dried fruit in cold water overnight.
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2. Next day, drain the fruit. Prepare the Suppengrün and set half of it aside, cut into small pieces and covered.
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3. Put the ribs in a large pot with the broth, cloves, bay, the parsley from the Suppengrün and the vegetable peelings and trimmings. Bring to a boil and simmer for about 1 1/2 hours.
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4. Strain the broth through a fine sieve into a second pot, keeping the ribs.
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5. Add the reserved vegetables, the beans and the dried fruit to the broth, bring to a boil and simmer for about 30 minutes. Add the peas for the last 5 minutes.
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6. Pull the meat off the ribs, shred it and return it to the soup.
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7. Season with the vinegar, sugar, nutmeg, salt and pepper until it tastes pleasantly sweet-sour.
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8. Fry the eggs in the oil. Ladle the soup into bowls, top each with a fried egg and scatter with dill.
Notes
- Despite the name, the current German magazine recipe this follows contains no eel: it uses smoked pork ribs. The city of Hamburg says it is uncertain whether eel belonged to the original dish, and notes that critics consider the fish a concession to visitors.
- For an eel version, add pieces of fresh or smoked eel gently to the soup near the end so they stay whole, and reduce the ribs; none of the sources gives a quantity of eel, so add it to taste.
- Alan Davidson describes the North German Saure Suppe (sweet-and-sour soup), which is the same family of dish, as a smoked ham bone with some meat on it, fresh vegetables, dried fruit for sweetness and dumplings for body; small dumplings are an optional addition in that style.
- Adjust the vinegar and sugar at the end, a little at a time: the balance of sweet and sour is the character of the soup.
- Make ahead: the soup keeps for two days in the fridge, and the flavours deepen; fry the eggs just before serving.
Adapted from lecker.de (kochen & genießen 10/2024), Hamburger Aalsuppe and Alan Davidson, North Atlantic Seafood (1980), Hamburger Aalsuppe.
At the festivals
No festival we list has printed it on a menu yet.