Schwäbische Maultaschen

Appearance & taste

The pasta casing is pale yellow to pale grey, firm to the bite and not sticky. The filling is loosely mixed, with a structure that is still recognisable, and soft. The Maultaschen are rectangular or rolled. A standard Maultasche is 5.5 to 10 cm long, 5 to 9 cm wide, 1.5 to 2.5 cm high and weighs 40 to 150 g; a soup Maultasche is 1 to 5.5 cm long, 1 to 5 cm wide, 0.5 to 2 cm high and weighs 10 to 40 g.

They are offered fresh or packaged and are poached or fried before eating. The label reads “Schwäbische Maultaschen g.g.A.” or “Schwäbische Suppenmaultaschen g.g.A.”.

Production

The dough consists of durum wheat semolina and/or flour, whole egg, water and salt. The filling contains pork, beef, possibly smoked belly, spinach, parsley, onions, eggs, spices, bread and leek. Ingredients and proportions vary depending on the recipe and region. Maultaschen containing meat contain at least 8 % meat; the stuffing has at least 7 % meat protein free of connective tissue protein. Class A eggs are used.

Flour, semolina, egg and water are kneaded into a dough, which is extruded or rolled out and rolled into a sheet of dough. The meat or vegetable stuffing is mixed with bread, spinach, onions and spices and placed on the dough in measured portions. The strip of dough is then folded over, and the Maultaschen are portioned, heated and cooled to 2 to 7 °C, or to –18 °C as frozen goods.

Origin & history

The Swabia area covers the whole of Baden-Württemberg and the entire administrative district of Swabia in the Free State of Bavaria. According to the specification, the Maultasche has a centuries-old tradition there, and no other Swabian dish is as widely known as a speciality far beyond Swabia. Traditionally a Lenten dish for Maundy Thursday, it has since become a popular dish all year round and is offered by almost all butchers, meat product manufacturers and traditional restaurants in the region.

The Maultaschenfest is celebrated in Freiberg am Neckar every autumn, Baiersbronn chooses a Maultaschen queen, and around Bad Urach the Maultaschen-Weg leads across the Swabian Jura. In 1982 an innkeeper from Maulbronn made 1,134 Maultaschen in 22 minutes. Swabian literature has many poems and stories about the Maultasche, for example by Thaddäus Troll, who compared the identity of the Swabians with a Maultasche, and by the dialect poets Heinz Eugen Schramm and Friedrich E. Vogt.