The Pfalz’s Unlikely Catch: A Fish Soup Story

There is no fish soup in the Pfalz. Sad, but true. Like most of Germany’s winegrowing regions, the Pfalz is simply too far removed from the sea for fish to feature prominently in its traditional cuisine. By extension, Pfalz fish soup is practically a culinary contradiction. A delicious deception. A seafood swindle.  

A Pfalz cookbook is a celebration of rustic comfort: Leberknödel (liver dumplings), Kartoffelsuppe mit Speck (potato soup with bacon, often in unlikely combination with plum cake), and, of course, Saumagen (stuffed pig’s stomach). Arguably the region’s culinary signature dish, this is a hearty, sausage-y mix of pork, potato, chestnuts, and spices including marjoram and nutmeg, stuffed into a cleaned sow’s stomach and served with sauerkraut and roasted potatoes.

And were the Pfälzer to have a fish soup of their own, one might surmise its secret would lay in channeling the spirit of Saumagen.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The idea of “falsifying,” or better yet Pfalz-ifiying, fish soup for the landlocked region came to me and winegrower Hans-Christoph (“Hansi”) Stolleis during the 2022 farm festival at Weingut Stolleis in Gimmeldingen – an event that in hindsight, served as the inaugural Pfälzer Fischsuppe festival. 

A Fish Soup of Their Own

Our goal was simple: create a down-to-earth dish that captured the Pfalz’s practical sensibilities, while playfully pushing its region’s culinary boundaries. 

Fish soup has a certain conviviality and comfort that few dishes can match. It’s a meal for full plates and old stories.

I enjoy playing with seasonings and aromas to flip a dish’s core element. Replacing meat with fish works best when you highlight smoky notes to trigger that inescapable BBQ-meat associative chain. It’s why smoked salt is vegetarian catnip. The key was a quartet of marjoram, nutmeg, chestnut, and smoky aromas – a combination that subtly echoes the heart of the Saumagen beating to the rhythm of spice, warmth, and well-being.

Yet, this recipe was less the origin than the result of that insight. Fish soup has a certain conviviality and comfort to it that few other dishes can match. It’s a meal for full plates and old stories. 

Chefs worldwide seem to have picked up on this. When I trained at a Michelin two-star restaurant in the Saarland, our menu never failed to include bouillabaisse, a dish more rustic than refined. In Japan, the traditional o-zoni, created from a tuna fish base with a bit of mochi, celebrates the new year. In Baja on the Danube in Hungary, the marketplace is emptied every July to make room for the preparation of a communal carp soup cooked in more than 1,000 dutch ovens. We believed the “salt of the earth” Pfälzer deserved a fish soup of their own. 

The Perfect Pairing: Stolleis Riesling Gimmeldingen Reserve

The wine I’m now recommending wasn’t available when we held the first Pfalz Fish Soup Festival. To be precise: it did exist, but only about ten meters below the kitchen, slumbering away in the cellar on the fine lees, where Stolleis had left it to mature for 42 months. Compared to the lithe elegance of his other single-site wines, the Reserve Riesling has broader shoulders, more body, and plenty of “meat on its bones.”

It’s exactly this ease and generosity that make it an ideal companion to fish soup —  and, perhaps to Saumagen itself. For those who don’t have this wine on hand, try a classic Riesling with approachable and copious fruit, veering in the direction of ripe citrus and apricot.

Pfälzer Fischsuppe

In order to preserve fish soup’s inherent salty, smoky soul, I use regionally smoked trout, reserving the carcass, skin, and head for the broth. The fish fillets and soup greens, including potatoes, serve as garnish. Top the soup with croûtons seasoned to taste like Saumagen: chestnuts, nutmeg, and especially marjoram, the spice of choice for butchers across southwestern Germany. For those who desire it, the seasoning can be baked into a separate bread, but purchasing a bread for home spicing works as well.

Serves 8 

Ingredients

• 1 large smoked trout (approx. 400-500 g) or two small ones (approx. 200-300 g) with head, skin, and carcass
• 800 ml water
• 1 medium carrot and equal amounts of leek, celery, and onion
• 1 medium waxy potato
• 100 ml Riesling
• 20 ml soy sauce
• 2 bay leaves
• 100 g crème fraîche
• 100 g chestnuts (fresh out of the oven if autumn, otherwise from a jar)
• Spices: Nutmeg, salt, marjoram 
• Bread:
  • 400 g flour (all purpose or bread flour) 
  • 1/4 tsp instant yeast (1 g) 
  • 1 1/4 tsp salt (8 g) 
  • 300 ml water 

Preparation

Broth

Separate the fillets from the carcass with a knife and set aside. Bring the carcass to a slow boil, together with half of the vegetables (excepting potatoes), bay leaf, Riesling, soy sauce, water, and a bit of salt. Because the fish is salted during the smoking process, a half teaspoon is more than enough. Once the broth has been brought to a boil, turn down the heat and let simmer gently for one hour. Pour the broth through a fine strainer. 

Bread

Because the bread will end up cut into cubes and sautéed in butter, I don’t go crazy with the artistry. If you already have your own bread recipe, stick with it, adding marjoram and chopped chestnuts to the batter. I adapted a simple no-knead bread recipe (such as this one). 

In a bowl, mix the marjoram and chestnuts together with flour, salt, yeast, and water into a sticky batter. Let rise for 12-20 hours at room temperature. Fold the dough onto a floured surface, rest for 15 minutes. Form into a ball and give 2 more hours to rise. Preheat a cast iron pot in the oven to 250°C. Turn out the batter into the hot pan. Bake covered for 30 minutes, then an additional 15-30 minutes uncovered, until golden brown. Let cool and cut into cubes.

Soup Garnish

Cook the potato in its skin with plenty of salt until almost cooked through, but still a bit hard in the middle, so that the broth can finish the cooking without making it crumbly. Pour out the water, let the potato steam off in the hot, empty pot for a few minutes, then peel and cut into approx. 1 cm cubes. Cut the remaining carrots, celery, leek, and onion into roughly half-centimeter cubes.

Stir in the crème fraîche with plenty of nutmeg and a bit of salt. 

For the homemade chestnut/marjoram bread, sauté golden brown in butter. Otherwise, roast a light farmhouse bread together with chopped chestnuts and marjoram until golden brown in butter. 

Serving

Bring the broth back up to a boil and cook the carrots, celery, leek, and onions in it for roughly 10 minutes. Then season to taste again with Riesling and salt. Next, warm the potatoes and fish fillets for one minute in the hot, but no longer boiling, soup. Serve in soup bowls, finishing with croûtons and a spoonful of nutmeg-laced crème fraîche.