We’ve got a German hockey player (Xaver) billeted with us at the moment. I served him some schnitzels a few weeks ago, and served them with rosti and sauerkraut.
I quite enjoy cooking rösti (pronounced ruu-shti) to go with schnitzels. It’s a little more trouble than doing mash—grated potato with the excess water squeezed out, bound with an egg and pan fried. (Sauerkraut comes from sauer meaning acid and kraut for cabbage).
I do recognise that rosti is a borrow word from Northern Europe and had assumed it is a German word for a potato cake. My research took me into a world of cultural identity and potato geopolitics.
Rösti as cultural marker
Rösti is really a Swiss German word from rösten, meaning to roast or to fry. In Switzerland, rösti has significant cultural status. The rosti provides its name to the Röstigraben, a metaphorical divide between the German and French-speaking regions and cultures. It’s the German speakers who use the semi-humorous term which literally means rösti ditch. The French-speakers refer to their version as a galette de pommes de terre (potato cake) or galette de rösti (rosti cake).
German potato cakes
But the plot thickens. I asked Xaver what he calls rösti and I got an unexpected but delightful answer. “That’s a kartoffelpuffer he said. Kartoffel means potato, and puffer comes from puffen—to puff or blow up (the Germans just add their words together to form Bandwurmwörter. Now that is more like it. What a delightful word.
However, it does make matters confusing. If the Swiss Germans were really that German there would be a Kartoffellpuffergraben dividing the Swiss culturally, linguistically and culinarily not a Röstigraben.
More potato cakes
So based on this little story, potato cakes are proving to be important to cultural identity. In Yiddish tradition, potato cakes are latkes, often eaten at Hanukkah. In the U.S. through their fast food franchises we are given hash browns. The Czechs have bramborák, a potato pancake with garlic and marjoram, from brambor (potato) and –ák, a suffix that turns it into a potatoey thing. In Hungary they have Tócsni,which may come from puddle—perhaps describing its shape in the pan. The Irish have boxty possibly from “arán bocht tí’ meaning poor house bread.
The Australian scallop
Australians, of course, have their own potato naming divide. In NSW, WA and Queensland, you’ll get a potato scallop. In Victoria, it’s a potato cake. South Australians might call it a potato fritter. They’re all battered slices of potato, deep-fried, and eaten hot. But some think a potato cake needs to be made from mashed or grated potato. I have to admit I have always called them scollops which is how I have always heard them pronounced.
Potato geopolitics
I feel like I should duck out at lunch time and try to find myself some scallops. They were always the most popular thing at the takeaway when I was growing up in rural NSW. I just didn’t realise that they may have separated NSW people from Victorians across the scallopigraben!