The King and the Count's Soup (early 19th century)
https://www.culina-vetus.de/2026/05/20/the-king-and-the-counts-soup-feeding-the-revolution-xxii/
On the evening of 3 May 1847, the year before all of Europe exploded into revolution, there was music in the streets of Stuttgart, but not the kind most people were glad to hear. Inhabitants of the impoverished suburbs had assembled under cover of darkness to serenade a master baker with a Katzenmusik, a noisy protest to remind the powerful of their obligations towards the poor. This tradition, known in France as charivari and in England as rough music, existed in most of Europe, and it goes back a long way. Nonviolent, but disruptive, it publicly shamed those who were seen as breaking the rules of proper behaviour.
Master baker Mayer of Stuttgart was one such person. For several days now, he had offered no bread for sale. His oven was being repaired, he claimed, but this was widely suspected to be a lie. Mayer had a history of speculating in grain and rumour had it he was withholding his goods from the market until the bread price rose even further. This was not, as it would be in most Western countries today, a private business decision. Stuttgart in 1847 had a regulated bakers’ guild whose privileges came with obligations. The authorities set the bread price according to the cost of grain, and it was the job of the bakers to produce it. Clearly, Mayer was breaking that compact.
The price of bread in the 1840s, much like that of petrol or electricity today, was central to the survival of working class people and subject to a variety of regulations. There were limits to what any government could do, though. A series of poor harvests and the general economic squeeze of the ‘Hungry Forties’ meant that prices were high simply because there was not enough. Bread (or beer) riots happened throughout Germany. Stuttgart was no exception, but events here took an unusually violent turn.
There was no such thing as a protest permit, but it was known when a Katzenmusik would happen. The city garrison stood prepared when the angry crowd surrounded the bakery, first shouting and singing, then smashing in the windows by throwing stones. Troops sent to disperse the protest attacked the crowd with their sabres. The result was a series of running street fights in which several soldiers and numerous civilians were injured. So far, this was the depressing normality of 1840s Germany. Then, King Wilhelm I of Württemberg decided a personal intervention was called for. He left the palace at the head of a guards detail to restore order by appealing to his subjects. To his great surprise, the soldiers were pelted with stones and when a group of rioters armed with fence rails came close, they fired a volley in the air. Several people were injured, and one bullet killed a journeyman shoemaker who turned out to be a citizen of Frankfurt, making this – technically – an international incident.
Wilhelm was what you would traditionally call a good king. He cared about the welfare of his people, fostered education and industry, and permitted one of the most liberal constitutions in any German state. Stuttgart was not the kind of place where jackbooted thugs or moustache-twirling plutocrats ruled as tyrants. The town’s bread prices were set by a public process, with a reduced rate for the poor, and civic spirit produced all kinds of adornments and comforts, including that inevitable feature of the early 19th century, a Suppenanstalt.
Soup has been a mainstay of poor people’s diets for millennia. It can accommodate almost any ingredient, is easily varied, and stretched by just adding water. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, scientific thinkers engaged with the concept to produce economical, but nutritious versions in an effort to fight the rise of extreme poverty. In Germany, the central figure in this endeavour was Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. A veteran of the American War of Independence, holder of an English knighthood and a count of the Holy Roman Empire, the life story of this highly respected scientist and engineer deserves at least one post of its own. In Germany, though, he was most famous for Rumfordsuppe.
Rumfordsuppe or Rumford’sche Suppe was a soup designed along scientific lines to extract the maximum of nutrition for minimal outlay. It was cooked on purpose-built stoves in central kitchens to realise economies of scale. A portion was meant to be a meal in itself, enough to meet the needs of a man doing hard physical labour all day, and between the calories from cereals and potatoes, the protein of legumes and meat, and the salt providing electrolytes, it probably came fairly close for 19th-century institutional food. The count’s original plan was for soup kitchens to sell this at cost, or slightly below, to drive home the point that the people eating it were customers, not charity cases. It was, however, also quickly adopted by institutions catering to the indigent, prisoners, and common soldiers. Local variations abound, and it continues to feature in cookbooks until the end of the century to remind us that wealthy households were expected to provide for the less fortunate in times of dearth. One of the early institutional recipes comes from the records of the Hamburg Allgemeine Armen-Anstalt recorded in January of 1798:
This dish is very pleasant in taste and, given a proper variety of inexpensive ingredients, stimulates the appetite to the degree that an ever growing children and adults persisted in eating the same food for twelve months and regularly came back for it. (…)
About 150 pounds of water, 23 pounds of potatoes, 10 pounds of barley groats, 10 pounds of peas, 5 pounds of hard bread, the harder, the better, 3 pounds of meat, smoked or salted, ideally pork, 7 pounds of alegar, and 2 3/4 lbs of salt (The quantity of this must be determined more precisely according to the strength of the vinegar and the sharpness of the salt, but above all by the taste of the eater). About 20-30 pounds of peat to heat the stove.
On the previous evening … the barley groats and peas or beans are placed in the cauldron and the water poured on to soak them. If the meal is to be eaten at 12 o’clock, the fire must be lit under the cauldron by 6 in the morning. After the groats and peas have been cooking gently for two to three hours, the peeled potatoes and the salt are added. After another hour, the meat or bacon is added, chopped very finely. A quarter hour before serving, the vinegar is added. The bread, the harder, the better, is cut into small cubes and placed in the bowl in which the soup is to be served, and the soup poured over it. This is done so that it does not become soft and the chewing necessary for proper digestion is thus promoted. That is why, if old bread is not to be had, it must be fried thoroughly with fat. In this latter case, it is also better to use wheat bread because the acidity that black (i.e. coarse rye) bread always has is deleterious to the taste. … During cooking, the soup must be stirred frequently so it does not burn and is the better mixed and creamier (seemiger). The closer this soup comes to a porridge or the more jelly-like, the more nourishing it is. … It is entirely unnecessary and wasteful to eat bread alongside it because the soup already contains bread and nothing is added to its nutritional virtue (Nahrsamkeit). The bread is better saved for breakfast and supper. … This soup is made flavourful in the most incredible way by the addition of salt and vinegar and the proportionately small addition of chopped bacon or meat, but it must be prepared in a cleanly fashion and cook long and slow for five to six hours.
It can be varied in a number of ways. Grey peas, white beans, green peas, carrots (Wurzeln), white cabbage, or turnips (Rüben) can vary according to their season and potherbs (Suppen-Kräuter) be added. Barley groats and potatoes remain the primary ingredients that must never be omitted.
Further, in place of bacon or pork, smoked or salted oxmeat or chopped onions fried in fat can be added. … It all relies on the manner of preparation, as it does in the kitchens of the wealthy.
(quoted after Antje Kraus: Die Unterschichten Hamburgs in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart 1965)
It is interesting to compare this with the instructions preserved by Maria Katharina Siegel in her Baier’sches Kochbuch in 1818:
The demand to participate in the distribution is very strong. That is why 900 portions of 1 3/4 pounds daily have been issued for a long time, feeding a total of 1200 people, adults and children. To produce 900 portions or 1575 pounds, you take
1400 pounds of water, 80 pounds of peas, 80 pounds of barley groats, 80 pounds of beans, 48 pounds of bread, 12 pounds of meat, 34 pounds of alegar and 14 pounds of salt. Altogether 1748 pounds, of which only 173 pounds are lost in cooking (verkochen).
The preparation is as follows: The previous evening, the groats and legumes are placed in the cauldrons filled half full of water and boiled up once. As soon as the water boils, the fire is withdrawn, the ash grate closed, and the cauldrons covered with close-fitting wooden covers. By the following morning, you will find the contents so swollen up and turned to jelly that it is thick enough to cut. This manner of soaking is greatly to be preferred to the customary use of cold water.
The time. If it is to be eaten at 11 o’clock, the water required to fill the cauldrons entirely is bought in by 5 o’clock in the morning and the fires are lit. This must not burn more strongly than is necessary to barely slowly cook the content and must be banked down as soon as it has just begun to boil. Very little fuel is needed to keep it boiling.
The preparation: Once the groats and legumes have cooked for two or two and half hours, the meat, cut in small dice, and the salt are added. The vinegar is poured in about a quarter hour before serving. The bread, which must be as old as possible, is cut into small cubes and must be added just before the soup is served. This is done in order for it not to become too soft and thus to promote chewing necessary for good digestion. That is why the same, if it cannot be had old, must be fried with fat.
Handling: during cooking, the soup must be stirred frequently, especially at the beginning, to prevent it from burning and make it thicker. That is also why the cauldrons must always be covered and the covers be provided with a hole for the handle of the stirring tool (Rührkrücke) to pass through. To this end, they are also rubbed with bacon before every use.
A complete meal. It is unnecessary to eat bread with this soup, more properly a porridge, as it contains this already, and nothing can be added to its nutritional virtue (Nahrsamkeit). Nobody here eats bread with it, and any such request is dismissed by the staff (Principienten) with the words: Why should we eat bread with it if there is bread in it? Its nutritional virtue is generally recognised, and many forestry workers returned with the lunch bread which they customarily took with them after having eaten of this soup because they felt no hunger all afternoon. As a rule, a healthy adult man is entirely satisfied with one portion, and very few are able to eat one and a half, or 2 5/8 pounds. Children have enough with half a portion. The soup is very enjoyable if it is prepared cleanly and carefully and cooked for at least six hours. The same finds such universal approbation that more is demanded every day than can be prepared and people come from villages one or two hours away.
Deviations from the Recipe: Barley groats and peas, but not, as many writers claim, potatoes, are the principal ingredients that must never be omitted. Potatoes can be dispensed with. The soup is as nutritious and creamy without them as with them. If you wish to use potatoes, you omit half the legumes and replace one pound of of peas or beans with two pounds of peeled, finely cut potatoes. The barley groats must never be lacking, and only half the legumes can be replaced by potatoes. The other half must remain. If the soup is to be more like a porridge, the peas and beans are ground coarsely (geschroten). But this produces a strong flavour and causes it to burn easily. That is why grinding is only advised if the peas refuse to soften.
A little meat is needed. As regards the meat, beef or mutton, particularly salted, is the best, and pork the least suitable. Fat is entirely unnecessary. If prepared properly, the soup is so thick and rich that wealthy inhabitants believed much fat was added and claimed that no such rich cooking went on in their own kitchens. Bones, too, are not needed and probably not even advisable … Potherbs, leeks, and pepper or some dried fruit are inexpensive means to vary and enhance the pleasant taste.
The recipe must be followed precisely. It is particularly necessary for the satisfying virtue of this soup that it be prepared on the above manner and be cooked for at least six hours gently on a slow fire so the water can gradually fix itself within the farinaceous (mehlartigen) substances and maintain their virtues. If this is not observed meticulously, the result is not even the same soup described here. Three years ago, I had proof of this. Rumford’s Soup was to be cooked here, and a butcher experienced in the rural art of cookery for weddings and baptisms was selected for the task. He deviated from the primary principles and the attempt failed. Cooking is generally done in copper cauldrons encased in masonry (eingemauerten). Setting up such a cauldron is quite easy, the masonry can be prepared within six hours, and cooking can begin immediately. The cauldrons are not damaged in the process and will be as useful for washing or brewing after the soup kitchen is dissolved as they were before. It will thus not be difficult to borrow the necessary cauldrons. Here, it was possible as everyone who had a suitable cauldron was happily willing to provide it to be set up in masonry where the cooking took place.
Small outlay. Aside from the cauldron, no other equipment is required except for wooden covers, stirring tools, and two ladles of which one holds 1 3/4 litres, the other 7/8 of a litre. It is thus very easy to introduce Rumford’s soup more widely than has previously occurred, primarily as the expense, regardless of the present enormous cost of all necessities, is not very considerable. A portion of 1 3/4 pounds only comes in at 65/9 Konventionsmünzen (the local Taler currency) and sells at 4 Pfennige (the smallest coin). Nothing is provided without cash payment as the process would otherwise be regarded as a free feeding of the poor (Armenspeisung) and fail to have the desired result in the present time of dearth. …
It is fairly clear from the wording that both texts rely on a shared source, but the ingredients vary, and this seems to be a conscious choice. Rumfordsuppe was not a dish as much as an industrial process that could be adapted to locally available raw materials. Preparing it even with the best of will struck a precarious balance between efficiency and enjoyment. At its worst, institutional versions were little more than nineteenth-century Nutraloaf.
Reading the texts above gives us both a fairly good idea of the soup and of how King Wilhelm so badly misjudged the mood of his subjects. The pride the authors took in mastering the complex process to produce what they see as appetising food is palpable. They are providing a lifeline to their fellow men through the miracle of science and educating them in the rational management of their bodily needs. Contented customers return day after day to enjoy their delicious meals. Strong labouring men marvel to find all their needs met by a single serving. Absolutely no bread is needed alongside it, and any such importunate request will be denied.
Bread, though, was not just calories. It was the mainstay of the German diet, the universal symbol of hospitality, the very essence of what food was. It could make a meal in itself, but accompanied all other foods. Denying someone bread was cruelty. There were bread riots, not potato or porridge riots, in German cities. The poor demanded bread from their rulers. An impoverished artisan or labourer depending on a bowlful of Rumfordsuppe for his survival would have found it hard to appreciate the effort and good will of the people who sold it to him.
This problem is depressingly common in history. The comfortable, secure and validated by their institutions, do not need to be evil to hurt the poor and excluded. Even their best efforts to help can be disruptive and humiliating. If the help is accompanied by well-meaning efforts to educate and uplift the unfortunate, something the middle class seems especially prone to, the response can be violent. Certainly, the king riding into the suburbs of his capital that day did so with the firm belief that he had done all he could for his people and was beloved by them. Compared to many princes of the German Confederation, he was right, too. It made no difference to the people who eked out a precarious existence in rented garrets and cellars, competing over shrinking wages for ever fewer jobs. They resented being condescended to by the well-dressed, well-fed and well-protected over the few crumbs they were thrown. It was this sense of moral injury, the unquenchable anger of people who were not the victims of individual villains, but of an entire system that even with the best of will could not help inflicting harm on them, that fuelled revolutions.
The response to the riots of May 1847 was typical for the way Ancien Régime governments often dealt with such events. There were arrests and trials, people were sent to prison or exiled for alleged participation in the riot or even careless words spoken in support. Soldiers patrolled the streets, the curfew hours were extended, and a Bürgerwache, an improvised security force drafted from the ranks of the middle class, was formed. At the same time, a motion to provide for an increased grain supply passed the council. Cereal stores throughout the kingdom were registered and donations solicited from the wealthy to purchase more from abroad. By the end of the month, these measures brought down the bread price. Tensions defused for the time being, the curfew was returned to its previous hour and the Bürgerwache stood down. The city also records that visits to the Suppenanstalt decreased sharply.
If you were a member of the government or just the respectable classes, your interpretation of these events would be clear enough. The poor, never the most stable of people, were driven to violence by a temporary shortage of bread. Order was threatened, but restored through the quick response of the authorities. Some compromise was needed: civic-spirited charity, against economic reason, provided relief and the angry mob was placated. But if you lived in those suburbs, among the labouring classes, your story would read very different. You had successfully reminded the ruling class of their obligations to their subjects. Those who had broken the unspoken rules of society to egotistically fill their coffers had been chastened. Higher authority had been called on to intervene in the crisis. Once again, the poor could live with dignity and bread. In a way, this day could be read as a victory on both sides, but it decided nothing. A year later, royal crowns tumbled and barricades grew.
