Even people who have never been to Thuringia have heard of the Thüringer Rostbratwurst, the grilled Thuringian sausage, or of Thuringian dumplings. It’s fair to say that Thuringian recipes have achieved world fame. The question of whether this regional cuisine was different in the GDR than it is today, whether there were separate GDR recipes, can’t be answered so easily. Of course, as almost everywhere in the country, people sometimes had to improvise. But people in Thuringia are resourceful. Recipes were followed no matter who held the scepter. In many Thuringian families, making Thuringian dumplings still follows a fixed ritual today.
Thuringian recipes passed down through generations
For Grüne Klöße (green potato dumplings) you need potatoes and bread rolls, both plentiful, even in the GDR. Recipes for the dumplings are a kind of family secret. There are dedicated kitchen appliances and utensils for making them, which are also handed down. These include linen sacks in which the dumpling dough is spun, extra-large dumpling pots and a cast-iron device with a crank in which you grind the raw potatoes like in a meat grinder. GDR recipes for green dumplings, Sauerbraten (marinated pot roast) and bratwurst in GDR cookbooks are no different from those that are 100 years old. Classics remain classics, even as systems change.
A kitchen garden and good relatives in the village
Many GDR citizens naturally had a kitchen garden with beans, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, all kinds of fruit and flowers. That made you somewhat independent of the supply situation. What wasn’t eaten was preserved. There were plenty of bakers and butchers. Getting hold of a beef tenderloin was difficult. But there were enough Thuringian recipes for tasty roast pork, for goulash or for Buletten (meat patties), called Beefsteak here. The festive roast in Thuringia was and is a goose or a rabbit. Raising small animals was widespread and subsidized. Lucky were those who could get their roast from relatives in the country who kept animals.
Karpfen blau, potato salad and wieners
On holidays in particular, people stuck to strict menus. On Christmas Eve there was potato salad and wieners, and on New Year’s Eve Karpfen blau (carp poached until its skin turns blue). There were certainly also typical GDR recipes, for example for Soljanka (sour sausage soup) and Jägerschnitzel (breaded sausage cutlet). After all, there couldn’t be a festive roast every day, and these dishes used Jagdwurst, a mild bologna-style sausage, and other sausage quite creatively and tastily. But these were not Thuringian recipes, and such dishes were surely hardly more popular in Thuringia than anywhere else in the GDR. When Grandma traveled to the West, she was tasked with bringing back canned pineapple and chocolate. That’s how modest culinary longings were in the GDR. Recipes for these little gifts got around quickly.
Longing for exotic and foreign cuisine
The legendary Toast Hawaii (toast with ham, pineapple and melted cheese) was just as popular here as in the West. People liked to eat Ragout fin (fine meat ragout in a creamy sauce) and Steak au four (pork steak baked with a topping and cheese). Those were certainly typical GDR recipes. With imaginative names for dishes, you could at least take little trips in your head. The Suhl chef Rolf Anschütz became famous. The film “Sushi in Suhl” is a tribute to his life’s work. Thuringian recipes marked the start of his career as manager of the “Waffenschmied” (“The Gunsmith”), an HO-Gaststätte, a state-run restaurant. But he devoted himself more and more to Japanese cuisine. With a great talent for improvisation, his cooking even made him a legend in Japan, but after a visit to the faraway country he soon longed to be back in Thuringia.