Senfeier

Senfeier. This simple delicacy translates into Mustard celebration. And it is definitely that. Egg, potato, mustard – they simply taste good together. It’s no wonder that mustard celebration is a favorite dish of Berliner’s. It’s among the ones you taste and ask yourself why the hell is this simple thing not in your hometown a tradition as well. Mustard celebration or Senfeier has something in common with, shall we say, bread and butter.

They are so simply knitted, so naturally combined that there is probably not just one “inventor” who has brought the recipe into the world. At some point, they were just there and verifiably anchored in the German cooking canon by the middle of the 19th century at the latest, as the recipes in Henriette Davidi’s “Practical Cookbook” (1845) and Betty Gleim’s “Bremisches Kochbuch” (1843) prove.

The hour of birth of the mustard celebration can be roughly assigned to the beginning of the spread of the potato. Field cultivation in Ireland began around 1600, but it would be more than a hundred years before potatoes were known to Germany and another 50 years before they were eaten without hesitation. Mustard, on the other hand, has been known for much longer: it was cultivated in India almost 2000 years before our era.

The Romans were already developing different types of mustard preparation and in the European kitchens of the early Middle Ages, mustard was an important condiment. What the two cookbooks from the middle of the 19th century still reveal is that two variants of Senfeir were widespread in German cuisine: as a boiled egg that is doused with mustard sauce and as an egg boiled in mustard sauce.

The latter is definitely more of a separate dish. Senfeir got excited in the 2000s when chefs began to revive German kitchen classics. The egg cooked in mustard sauce experienced its first refinement as a poached egg, the yolk of which was still served liquid. Star chefs served versions in a sauce, mixed with potatoes, served as a base, on which he arranged potato chips and egg with char caviar. (Translation by www.tagesspiegel.de)