Saumagen

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Saumagen is a German dish popular in the Palatinate. The name means "sow's stomach," but the stomach is seldom eaten. Indeed, it is used like a casing (German Pelle) as with sausage, rather similar to the Scottish haggis. Saumagen consists of potatoes, carrots and pork, usually spiced with onions, marjoram, nutmeg and white pepper, in addition to which the various recipes also mention cloves, coriander, thyme, garlic, bay leaf, cardamom, basil, caraway, allspice, and parsley. Sometimes beef is used as well. The larger ingredients are diced finely. After that, the Saumagen is cooked in hot water and either served directly with Sauerkraut and mashed potatoes or stored in the refrigerator for later use. To warm it again, the Saumagen is fried. The typical drink for Saumagen is a dry white wine.

Saumagen was created in the 18th century by Palatinate farmers who used the left-overs they had to make a new dish. Today the ingredients are not left-overs at all; indeed the butchers creating Saumagen use very high quality ingredients.

Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor from 1982 to 1998, who came from the Palatinate, made Saumagen very popular. He served Saumagen to many foreign visitors such as Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Ronald Reagan. Kohl was sometimes ridiculed for this in other parts of Germany where it was perceived as another sign of his supposed provinciality. The connotations that are invoked by the mere term sow's stomach in people who are not really familiar with the dish (of which there are quite a few outside the Palatinate region) were not helping either.