Bouneschlupp: A green bean soup coming from Luxembourg

Soup is considered to be one of the first dishes appearing in the dawn of prehistorical
periods of times. Thanks to the invention of waterproof containers which were made in the
form of clay vessels in about 20,000 B.C., humans were able to boil water with bones of their
animals’ hunt, and have what is nowadays known as the stock 1, or boil water with vegetables
and roots and have the first version of the vegetarian soup.

Linguistically the word Soup originates from the PIE (Proto-Indo-European)

etymological root *seue- meaning “take liquid” which was transformed into *sub- and led to
the Proto-Germanic etymological root *sup- and the Middle Dutch one *sop- meaning “sop,
broth”. Latins had the word “suppa” meaning “bread soaked in broth”, French in the 13th
century talked about “soupe” meaning “broth, soup” and the final form of the word first
appears in 1650s.

It is of high interest how ‘soup’ did not only conquer people’s hearts as a dish but
dominated some conceptual fields of their lives with its metaphorical use. For example, the
phrase ‘Primordial Soup” was the term first introduced by the Soviet biologist Alexander
Oparin in 1924, referring to the solution rich in organic compounds in the primitive oceans of
the earth from which life is thought to have originated.

Also, the ‘Stone Soup’ is a famous story common in many traditional storytelling
heritages of different cultures. The basic core of the story is a stone used to make a soup which
attracts people so much that they offer to the poor makers of the stone soup various
ingredients so that this new, seemingly exciting and different soup gets even tastier. The result
is that the poor makers of the soup keep the ingredients offered by all those who want to
taste the soup, take away the stone and the primarily inedible soup turns into one of the
tastier soups, proving the importance of sharing and cooperation.

The soup we will talk about today is a Green Beans soup, one of the most popular
ones in the Luxembourgish cuisine. The soup is called Bouneschlupp and is a favorite dish of
all Luxembourgish. So, what is nicer than sharing an eating habit of Luxembourg, a
multinational core in the centre of Europe which hosts all kinds of cuisine of its multicultural
population?

Bouneschlupp is a stew of fresh green beans and potatoes. It bears numerous

variations depending on the preference of the cook on adding other vegetables as well or
using other ways of tying it instead of the potato. Léa Linster, arguably one of the best-known
Luxembourgish chefs, proposes the addition of Celeriac and leek.

Bouneschlupp basic recipe

Ingredients:

500 g fresh green beans (bush beans or broad beans)

4-5 potatoes

1 large potato, floury (for binding)

2 small leeks

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

pg. 1 Papamargariti Maria

 3 litres of water

2 cubes of poultry bouillon (optional)

5 cubes of vegetable broth (or handmade vegetable broth)

2 onions

2 cloves of garlic

Branch of fresh parsley

Chevril (dehydrated or fresh)

2 teaspoons of dried savory

Salt and pepper

Preparation: Cut the green beans in sticks of 1 to 2 cm. Do the same with the leeks. Cut the
potatoes in small or medium cubes. Grate the floury large potato. In a large saucepan heat
the oil and sweatset the chopped onions and garlic along with the leeks. Add the beans in the
saucepan with the broth cubes and the water. Simmer for 15-20 minutes depending on the
type of bean and the size of the cut. Then add the potatoes, the grated floury potato and the
savory and boil for another 10 minutes. Finally, season with salt and pepper. You can
accompany the dish with sour cream or any other kind of cream. The soup is ready. Gudde
Appetit! as they say in Luxembourgish.

References

"Bouneschlupp" – Luxemburger Grüne Bohnensuppe. foodblog: paules ki(t)chen.

http://www.paules.lu/2009/10/•-“bouneschlupp”-luxemburger-grune-bohnensuppe/.
Published February 7, 2010. Accessed June 24, 2019.

Soup (n.). Index. https://www.etymonline.com/word/soup. Accessed June 24, 2019.

Soup, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soup. Published June 9, 2019.

Accessed June 24, 2019.

Stone Soup. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_Soup. Published June

12, 2019. Accessed June 24, 2019.

pg. 2 Papamargariti Maria