Swabian German Potato Salad: Schwäbischer Kartoffelsalat

Potatoes came from South America and they originally were taken to Europe by the Spanish in the 1500s, when Spain was in the process of colonizing the potato growing areas of South America. Lots of stories I've heard over the years indicate that some Europeans of those times thought potatoes were poisonous. Obviously, many doctors still work under this assumption, since they say that a baked potato with several pats of butter and a half cup of sour cream can be bad for you. Geez, how bad can one potato be for you? So I guess potatoes can be dangerous (PLEASE don't take me seriously here). 

In the United States, potato salad is often associated with warm weather, picnics or outdoor parties, and the most common form is made with mayonnaise, which means the potato salad is usually refrigerated for some period of time before serving to keep it from spoiling. This mayonnaise-based potato salad came to the United States with immigrants from northern areas of Germany, where potato salad was and still is often made with mayonnaise. Further south in Germany, however, that is not often the case. Swabia has long been a traditional German region the boundaries of which have transcended various political boundaries at any given time. As in more modern times, it is not a governmental unit with specific boundaries, although for several hundred years in the Old German Empire it was a duchy. The dialect there and in neighboring areas of Germany, Switzerland and France is Alemannic German. In this part of southwestern Germany, potato salad is made with a marinade using beef broth as its basis. As you can see, the potato salad has no actual meat in it, but further east, in parts of Bavaria, there is a tendency to add bacon to the potato salad, and it is this bacon seasoned version that I would say most Americans think of as "German potato salad," and there are commercial brands of this "general recipe" available in cans or deli containers here in the United States.      

Ingredients:

2 1/2 pounds potatoes, red or Yukon Gold potatoes are good for this
1 cup chopped white or yellow onion
1 cup hearty beef broth, hot
1 tablespoon mild German mustard
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon ground white pepper
2 to 3 teaspoons salt (you can use less if the broth has high salt content)
1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon (or 1 heaping teaspoon crumbled dry tarragon)
1 or 2 tablespoons chopped chives 

Cook the potatoes in their skins until they are tender, but still firm and NOT mushy. Let the potatoes cool somewhat, so that you can handle them, then peel and slice them (they should be warm and slice them about 1/3 of an inch thick). Heat the beef broth, chopped onion, mustard, white wine vinegar and sugar until it just begins to bubble, then remove it from the heat (the onion should still have lots of "crunch"; also taste the mixture and see if it needs a little more sugar for your preference). Pour the hot beef broth mixture over the warm potato slices and let the potatoes sit for an hour in the broth, but give it a careful (so as not to break up the potato slices) stir about every 15 to 20 minutes, so that all of the potato slices get a good chance to absorb the flavors. Add the olive oil, ground white pepper, salt, chopped tarragon and chopped chives. Slowly and carefully (again, you don't want to break up the potato slices) mix everything. You can serve the potato salad right away, or refrigerate it, but remove it from the refrigerator 20 to 30 minutes before serving.   

Served with roasted smoked pork shank ...

WORD HISTORY:
Tidings-This word, closely related to "tide" and "time," both from Germanic, goes back to Indo European "di/da," which had the notion of "divide, separate into pieces." This gave its Old Germanic offspring "tidiz," meaning "period of time." This gave Old English (Anglo-Saxon) "tid" (long "i"), meaning "period of time, season, feast or festival time/hour," and later, "religious hour, time of prayer." "Christmastide" still shows the word with one of its original meanings. The word later became "tide," but the ending "e" was pronounced as "eh/ah," as this was before the final "e" was used to show that the interior vowel was long. (In the 1300s, the word came to be used for "rising and falling of the seas," a meaning which seems to have come from close relative Low German "tit/getide," later "Tide," which meant "time," but also had the "rise and fall of the the seas" meaning.) Meanwhile, the meaning "festival and religious time" took on the more general sense, "a happening, an event," and this "seems" to have spawned the verb "tidan,"^ meaning, "to happen." This produced the noun "tidung," meaning, "a happening;" thus also, "news." This seems to have been reinforced and influenced by Old Norse "tiðendi" (=tithendi), its relative, and meaning, "happenings, news," in the true plural sense, and "apparently" that is why English uses "tidings," not just "tiding," anymore. Some relatives in other Germanic languages: German "Zeitung" (newspaper, long ago as "zidunge" meaning "message, announcement"), Low German had "tidinge" (event, message), but it has been replaced in the last couple of centuries by the related "Tieden" (news, newspaper), Dutch has "tijding" (announcement, message), West Frisian "tynge" (message, communication), Icelandic has "tíðindi" (=tithindi, news), Danish/Norwegian "tidende" (newspaper, now an older form), Swedish "tidning" (newspaper).    

^ "Tidan" may well have already existed, and I suspect that it did, but I'm just not sure.