Frankfurter Grüne Soße

Frankfurter Grüne Soße belongs to Hesse, strongest in Frankfurt, and it comes to the table when spring finally gives you herbs worth chopping. Around Easter, especially Gründonnerstag, Maundy Thursday, it turns potatoes and hard eggs into a proper meal without meat. That isn't a compromise. It's the season doing its work.

Frankfurt argues for seven herbs: borage, chervil, cress, parsley, salad burnet, sorrel, and chives. Elsewhere in Hesse they quarrel over dill, lovage, mayonnaise, yoghurt, eggs chopped into the sauce or set beside it. Im Norden anders, im Süden anders, and even Hesse can't leave one bowl alone. For Frankfurt, keep the seven and keep them raw.

The technique is simple and strict: chop the herbs with a sharp knife and fold them into cold sour cream and quark. Don't heat them. Don't grind them to paste. Heat kills the bite and turns the green dull; hard blending bruises the soft herbs and makes borage and cress taste bitter. Nicht aus dem Glas. The whole sauce is the smell of fresh cut herbs meeting cold dairy.

The thrift underneath is plain: potatoes from the cellar, eggs from the spring laying, herbs cut before they bolt. Let the sauce rest cold for half an hour so the dairy takes the herb oils, then taste for salt and lemon at the end. Würzen, Fett, Salz zum Schluss. Schön ist, was schmeckt.