Grüne Soße with eggs and potatoes (Frankfurt)

🇩🇪Frankfurt, Germany

The Grüne Soße Pilgrimage

Seven herbs blitzed into a cool, tangy green sauce, poured over boiled eggs and potatoes. Frankfurt is so fond of it there's a festival.

Photo: Foodish.cooking

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Why this dish?

Grüne Soße ('green sauce') is a cold sauce of seven specific herbs - borage, sorrel, cress, chervil, chives, parsley and salad burnet - finely chopped and folded through soured cream, yoghurt or quark with hard-boiled eggs. It's served over more boiled eggs and potatoes, or alongside boiled beef. Fresh, herby, faintly sharp: the opposite of the heavy German cliché, and Frankfurt's pride.

The seven-herb mix is genuinely hard to source outside the region, which makes this a proper pilgrimage dish - it tastes of a particular place and season. Eat it in an apple-wine tavern in Sachsenhausen, washed down with tart Ebbelwoi (Frankfurt cider) from a ribbed glass, and you've had something you simply can't get right at home.

Our Picks

Apfelwein Wagner

Address: Schweizer Str. 71, Frankfurt (Sachsenhausen)
What to order: Grüne Soße mit Ei und Kartoffeln (with egg and potato), and a Bembel of apple wine to share.
Book ahead: It's big and bustling; share a table, book for groups.
Pro tip: Order the Bembel (a grey-and-blue stoneware jug) of Ebbelwoi for the table - it's the local way.

Zum Gemalten Haus

Schweizer Str. 67, Frankfurt (Sachsenhausen)

A beloved apfelwein institution next door to Wagner, walls covered in murals and benches full of regulars.

What to order: Grüne Soße, or Handkäse mit Musik (a pungent cheese with onions) if you're brave.

Good to know

Grüne Soße is best in spring/summer when the herbs are fresh; some places run it year-round with preserved mixes. Ebbelwoi (apple wine) is an acquired taste - tart and dry; try it 'sauergespritzt' (with sparkling water) if neat is too sharp. Sachsenhausen's tavern quarter is a short walk or tram from the centre.

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