flipJacket Potatoes with Quark (Pellkartoffeln mit Quark)
Jacket Potatoes with Quark (Pellkartoffeln mit Quark)
Why this dish? In the years of greatest hardship, in the Dean Street lodgings in Soho, the Marx family subsisted on Engels' remittances and ate as simply as possible: potatoes and bread. This dish of hot potatoes with fresh curd cheese is the very face of that dignified Rhenish poverty.
Potatoes boiled in their skins, split open while steaming, and topped with quark whipped with chives and salt. A subsistence dish, comforting and nourishing for pennies.
See this plate of jacket potatoes, steaming, crowned with their dollop of quark: that is the ordinary feast on my table at Dean Street. Capital left us little, and the butcher even less; but a hot potato, a little salt, and one can keep standing to write until dawn. My Jenny used to peel them laughing at our misery, and I claimed that no bourgeois banquet was worth this bread of the poor. Eat, and think of all those who haven't even that.
- •Firm potatoes — a good full pot (nourishing base)
- •Quark (beaten curd cheese) — a large bowl (fresh topping)
- •Chives or spring onion — a handful, chopped (freshness, aroma)
- •Salt — to hand (seasoning)
- •Milk — a splash (to loosen the cheese)
Jacket Potatoes with Quark (Pellkartoffeln mit Quark)
Potatoes boiled in their skins, split open while steaming, and topped with quark whipped with chives and salt. A subsistence dish, comforting and nourishing for pennies.
Why this dish? In the years of greatest hardship, in the Dean Street lodgings in Soho, the Marx family subsisted on Engels' remittances and ate as simply as possible: potatoes and bread. This dish of hot potatoes with fresh curd cheese is the very face of that dignified Rhenish poverty.
See this plate of jacket potatoes, steaming, crowned with their dollop of quark: that is the ordinary feast on my table at Dean Street. Capital left us little, and the butcher even less; but a hot potato, a little salt, and one can keep standing to write until dawn. My Jenny used to peel them laughing at our misery, and I claimed that no bourgeois banquet was worth this bread of the poor. Eat, and think of all those who haven't even that.
Ingredients (period version)
- Firm potatoes — a good full pot (nourishing base)
- Quark (beaten curd cheese) — a large bowl (fresh topping)
- Chives or spring onion — a handful, chopped (freshness, aroma)
- Salt — to hand (seasoning)
- Milk — a splash (to loosen the cheese)
Ingredients
- Waxy potatoes — 800 g (nourishing base)
- Quark or drained fromage blanc — 400 g (fresh topping)
- Chopped chives — 1 bunch (freshness, aroma)
- Milk — 3 tbsp (to loosen the cheese)
- Salt, pepper — to taste (seasoning)
Method
- Scrub the potatoes without peeling and boil them in salted water for 20–25 minutes, until a knife slides in easily.
- Meanwhile, whisk the quark with the milk to soften it, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the chives.
- Drain the potatoes, cut a cross into each and gently push the ends to open.
- Place a generous spoonful of quark on each potato and serve immediately, piping hot.
How it was made : Quark (curd cheese) was an everyday food in the Rhineland and throughout 19th-century Germany, cheap and easy to produce. Paired with potatoes boiled in their skins (saving time and peeling), it made a complete, affordable meal for workers and impoverished families. It was often eaten directly from the pot.
The contemporary twist : A drizzle of linseed oil over the quark — the famous *Leinöl mit Quark* of German home cooking — and a few toasted caraway seeds to wake it all up.
Sources : Wilhelm Liebknecht, Karl Marx zum Gedächtnis (Reminiscences of Marx), 1896 · Francis Wheen, Karl Marx: A Life, 1999
Karl Marx · Charactorium
