Yep, the sign says it all
St Pauli: hip, happening Hamburg
A weekend in St. Pauli, the beating heart of Hamburg. There would be wine, there would be music, but also, there would be labskaus.
Knowing my potato obsession, labskaus was one of the first things that our friends helpfully mentioned on the flight out. A local speciality of mashed potato mixed with corned beef and beetroot, topped with fried eggs and served with rollmop herrings and pickles, we had also received fair warning from the Hamburg natives: it looks disgusting. No matter about that, though. It was too intriguing not to seek out.
Labskaus on the menu
(and yes, potatoes, in general, are a definite feature of traditional Hamburg fare)
Labskaus, we learned, is the kind of unfancy, stick-to-your-ribs food that dock workers in this major German port city would have eaten in times gone by. While you might not expect to find labskaus on too many modern menus, Raval Brasserie in St. Pauli, which specialises in local Hamburg dishes, had labskaus and more.
Labskaus at Raval Brasserie in St. Pauli: it's colourful, that's for sure
When it arrived at the table, my sister surveyed her labskaus, if not with suspicion, then with a certain degree of trepidation. Still, she was gamely eating it, though was heard to say “I’m not exactly savouring this” or words to that effect. She continued, “You know you could actually make something nice with these ingredients…”, lending weight to the theory that labskaus may simply be something you need to have grown up with to love. I fared much better with my choice of fried fish and potatoes with mustard sauce, and a dessert of stewed cherries with vanilla custard was entirely simple and lovely.
Fried fish with fried potatoes and onions and a mustard sauce
Spudly curiosity satisfied, I enjoyed the rest of a wonderful weekend in Hamburg and returned home. As time went on, though, I found myself becoming more than a little inquisitive about what certain other well-known visitors to that city would have made of labskaus. Turns out there was more of a connection than I might have at first imagined.
Love, Love Me Labskaus
Tucked away on Paul Roosen Strasse in St. Pauli:
yes, The Beatles lived here
So, did those famous one-time residents of Hamburg, The Beatles, find anything just a little bit familiar about labskaus when they lived in St. Pauli, I wonder?
Larry Zuckerman’s fascinating book The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World notes that one of the earliest savoury potato recipes to emerge from England was lobscouse. The name rings a bell, no? It’s reported to have derived from lapskaus, a Norwegian word for stew, whilst the German labkaus has the same etymological origin.
Lobscouse dates from around 1700 and is reported by Zuckerman to have consisted of potatoes, meat, onions, and “strong seasonings”. It was eaten with hardtack and was popular as sailor’s fare in the ports of Lancashire, of which that future home town of The Beatles, Liverpool, was the largest. By the 1880s, lobscouser had become a nickname for sailor and ‘Scouse’ and ‘Scouser’ eventually came into common English usage to describe the Liverpool accent and a resident of Liverpool, respectively.
In contrast to labskaus, traditional Liverpool lobscouse (or simply ‘scouse) is more of a potato stew. Still a popular dish in Liverpool, it is reported here to have consisted traditionally of a cheap cut of lamb cooked with onions, carrots, water or stock and as many potatoes as possible. Interestingly, it is often served with preserved beetroot and, in some parts, as with its cousin, labskaus, corned beef is the preferred choice of meat. The Hamburg dish may, therefore, not have been entirely alien to the visiting Liverpool lads, though, if they ever wrote about it, those songs have, alas, been lost.
Looks good!I’ve never heard of that dish, will have to look out for it.
I’d never heard of it either, Aine, but it’s always interesting for me to discover new potato dishes as well as the places they come from.
Well, it at least looks better than it sounds. Still, I like the idea of “actually mak[ing] something nice with these ingredients…” a bit better :-)
Actually, Tim, I’ve been pondering the options for reconfiguring labskaus into “something nice” (and there are many) – so stay tuned to this channel for more!
I was recently in Germany too, as well as Norway AND I eat potatoes!! GREG
But did you have labskaus (or lapskaus) while you were there, Greg? Inquiring minds want to know!
Nice linguistic research Spud. Love the Fab Four connection
Yep, I love how it all came together myself Ange, great to get the Fab Four in there.
We have lapslaus in Norway too, but it tastes different the its Hamburger counterpart. In Norway it’s made of mashed potatoes with vegetables, pork meat or sausages. I find it better than the labskaus in Hamburg :)
Hi Marion – thanks so much for filling me in on the Norwegian version – sounds like I’ll have to visit Norway and check out the labskaus there!
I grew up in the U.S. but my Grandmother, on my father’s side, was from Norway and she passed a recipe for lobskaus to my mother when she married my father so I probably had lobskaus 10-15 times a year growing up. Like Marion said, it was very different, but my version was even more different as it was a stew with beef, carrots, celery and instead of it being mixed with mashed potatoes the stew had chunks of potatoes. However this recipe was probably altered by my Grandmother to suit the tastes of her 3 very American sons. Sometimes she’d also add chopped up hot dogs to the stew. My Grandfather was from Sweden but he was a cargo ship captain and often away.
Here comes the recipe:
500 g potatoes, approx 200ml beef stock, 1-2 onions, butter, ca 75 g pickled beetroot, 2 – 3 pickled sweet-sour gherkins, 340 g corned beef:
– make a coarse mash out of potatoes and beef stock
– cut onion(s) in very fine pieces and gently fry in butter, add corned beef
(chopped into small cubes) for last three minutes (put lid on pan)
– cut approx 75g pickled beetroot and 2-3 pickled sweet-sour gherkins in small pieces
– add onion / corned beef mix and beetroot and gherkins to potato mash and gently mix
– optional: add bit of anchovie paste, bit of pimento, bit of gherkin pickling sauce
– serve on a warm plate with gherkins / pickled beetroot / rollmops on the side and a fried egg on top
Why thanks for that Lutz, much appreciated!
I actually like the Norwegian version, quite a lot, with salted lamb, potatoes, onions, carrots, and turnips (rutabaga), an incredibly delicious stew.