Grumbeersupp

Grumbeersupp is old Palatine everyday cooking, for centuries a poor household's pot of potatoes and a few soup vegetables, and now a fixture of taverns, wine bars and forest huts across the Pfalz. The name comes from Grumbeer, the Palatine dialect word for potato: across the Palatinate, Baden and the Saarland the word for earth or ground is Grund rather than Erde, so from the 18th century the potato became the Grundbirne, the ground pear, contracting in dialect to Grumbeer and Grumbeere. The same Grundbirne even passed into Slovenian and Croatian as krompir. The dish has no single inventor; its distinguishing trait is the regional habit of eating it with something sweet, a Dampfnudel or a slice of Quetschekuche, alongside.

Served chunky, the soup is thick and homely, with soft pieces of potato and sweet vegetable in a starchy, faintly smoky broth; pureed, it is silky and almost creamy without any cream, the potato itself doing the thickening. Marjoram runs through it, and a piece of smoked sausage or bacon lays down a savoury, salty backbone. Then comes the surprise of the pairing: against the warm, earthy, savoury soup, a sugar-dusted Dampfnudel or a tart-sweet plum cake plays sweet off salty in the same mouthful. A squeeze of vinegar at the end brightens the whole bowl.

The soup thickens itself. Floury, high-starch potatoes shed amylose as they simmer and break down; that released starch gelatinises in the hot liquid and gives the broth body, which is why a partial puree turns it creamy with no cream or flour added. Sweating the leek, onion, celeriac and carrot first draws out their sugars and builds a savoury base, and a piece of smoked sausage or bacon donates salt, fat and smoke to the broth as it simmers. Marjoram, added toward the end, keeps its volatile aromatics. The famous sweet partner works on flavour contrast and palate-cleansing: the cake's sugar and acidity reset the palate between spoonfuls, the same logic behind any sweet-and-salty pairing.