Labskaus/ Lobscouse - the weird sailor's dish
Labskaus, the umminous cobbled-together dish that is more reminiscent of dog food than an edible dish. Many attribute the invention to seafarers, but the true origin is highly disputed.
Hamburg lobscouse
But first of all, what is Labskaus anyway? Well, if you don't believe it, this mush tastes good (believe me, I have lived in three different cities in northern Germany and have come across with three different variants) and originally consisted of salted meat mixed with hardtack, beetroot and pickled gherkins. This is how Ned Ward describes it in 1706 in The Wooden World Dissected- whereby he directly wished the inventor to the devil and declared it to be purely a seafarer's dish, which suggests that this dish has been in existence for longer than 1706.
For a long time the rumor said that this dish was served to the scurvy-stricken sailors on board, and as it was a porridge it was easy to swallow, and the beetroot and cucumber provided vitamin C which relieved the symptoms. But others say that the food known as poor man's food (because it was also eaten on land) was simply a result of the fact that not longer fresh foodstuffs such as salted meat, potatoes and pickled vegetables were mixed into a mush in order to disguise the actual state of the food. And since it was quite dark at home for most of the poor people and the Sailors below deck, it was hard to make out what was being served anyway.
It is impossible to say exactly which foodstuffs belong in labskaus, as every region has its own recipes. In northern Germany alone, there are different variations, sometimes with fish, sometimes with potatoes and a fried egg. It is also not known where this dish originated. There are sources that point to England, but the Baltic states and northern Germany are also being discussed. This in turn makes it difficult to determine the origin of the name. There are several interpretations, but they are all attested only in the 19th century. With a presumably English origin borrowed from lobscouse, it was possibly developed via lout's course from the dialectal lob's coursemit the meaning "food for louts". Another variant comes from the meat piece Lappen, i.e. belly flap piece of beef, and the addition of Kaus for Low German "bowl, dish". According to another source, the term is said to come from Norwegian for "easy to chew". It also seems possible that it originated in the Baltic States: the expressions labs kauss in Latvian and labas kaušas in Lithuanian both mean "good bowl".
It seems, however, that labskaus was a seafarer's dish that spread to the shore when the men went ashore and thus became a poor man's food, because it lasted a long time and the ingredients were kept simple. Depending on which version you cook. Today, labskaus has become a real delicacy in some regions, because many of the fish used are no longer easy to get hold of.
https://thomassixt.de/en/recipe/labskaus/
But if you would like to try it out, here is the North German, Hamburg version. Of course with a rollmobs (pickled herring fillet) and a fried egg :)
