German

Authentic-ish German

Name: Authentic-ish German: Oma's Classics, Lightened
Author: Danny Vale

Oma's Classics, Lightened

The cuisine with the worst reputation in the series and the least deserved. What people picture is festival food eaten in a tent twice a year. What people eat is soup, rye bread, cabbage and quark, and quark at 74 kcal per 100g and 14% protein is the best everyday building block in any of these books.

Not out yet. The swap kit from chapter 2 is free to read now, and it’s the part of the book you’d use most.

What’s in it

Recipes	Chapters	Average calorie saving	Dishes rejected
55	8	39%	5

Every dish, and what came off it

Each figure is per serving, computed from the ingredient list. The traditional column is the real dish, not a strawman: it’s costed from its own ingredient list so the saving is a measurement rather than a claim.

Dish	Chapter	Traditional	This version	Saving	Protein
Schweinshaxe	pork	1017 kcal	438 kcal	57%	68.3g
Sauerbraten	meat	580 kcal	409 kcal	29%	47g
Wiener Schnitzel	meat	646 kcal	290 kcal	55%	37.3g
Rotkohl	vegetables	227 kcal	147 kcal	35%	3.5g
Sauerkraut mit Speck	vegetables	166 kcal	138 kcal	17%	11.3g
Bratwurst mit Sauerkraut	pork	630 kcal	260 kcal	59%	16.2g
Kartoffelklosse	dumplings	381 kcal	327 kcal	14%	9.3g
Spätzle	dumplings	540 kcal	442 kcal	18%	16.9g
Kasespatzle	dumplings	921 kcal	672 kcal	27%	33.8g
Eintopf	soup	735 kcal	409 kcal	44%	35.7g
Erbsensuppe	soup	571 kcal	406 kcal	29%	35.2g
Gulaschsuppe	soup	523 kcal	347 kcal	34%	37.2g
Reibekuchen	dumplings	548 kcal	249 kcal	55%	7.6g
Frikadellen	meat	465 kcal	295 kcal	37%	32.4g
Konigsberger Klopse	meat	631 kcal	316 kcal	50%	37.6g
Bauernfrühstück	pork	311 kcal	153 kcal	51%	11.7g
Currywurst	pork	776 kcal	258 kcal	67%	18.2g
Schweinebraten	pork	1045 kcal	471 kcal	55%	54.1g
Kassler mit Sauerkraut	pork	660 kcal	422 kcal	36%	53.6g
Rinderbraten	meat	712 kcal	458 kcal	36%	49.4g
Hackbraten	meat	677 kcal	413 kcal	39%	39.9g
Martinsgans	meat	2552 kcal	1004 kcal	61%	129.9g
Rehragout	meat	541 kcal	417 kcal	23%	51.2g
Forelle Müllerin	fish	785 kcal	690 kcal	12%	73.8g
Matjes	fish	563 kcal	400 kcal	29%	36.3g
Fischbrötchen	fish	542 kcal	299 kcal	45%	24.9g
Backfisch	fish	1860 kcal	272 kcal	85%	32g
Labskaus	fish	600 kcal	496 kcal	17%	41g
Gruene Sosse	vegetables	337 kcal	200 kcal	41%	22.6g
Spargel mit Sauce Hollandaise	vegetables	548 kcal	164 kcal	70%	13.3g
Blaukraut	vegetables	330 kcal	365 kcal	-11%	15.9g
Kartoffelgratin	dumplings	601 kcal	315 kcal	48%	16.2g
Semmelknodel	dumplings	257 kcal	265 kcal	-3%	15.7g
Maultaschen	dumplings	678 kcal	516 kcal	24%	35.5g
Zwiebelkuchen	starters	494 kcal	331 kcal	33%	17.7g
Flammkuchen	starters	516 kcal	406 kcal	21%	21.4g
Obatzda	starters	322 kcal	154 kcal	52%	12.9g
Leberkase	starters	560 kcal	300 kcal	46%	35.4g
Rollmops	starters	200 kcal	112 kcal	44%	18.2g
Heringssalat	starters	475 kcal	286 kcal	40%	22.3g
Wurstsalat	starters	505 kcal	210 kcal	58%	28.8g
Kartoffelsuppe	soup	609 kcal	352 kcal	42%	21.9g
Grunkohl	vegetables	696 kcal	318 kcal	54%	28.6g
Himmel und Erde	dumplings	898 kcal	539 kcal	40%	26g
Senfeier	starters	525 kcal	424 kcal	19%	29g
Kasekuchen	pudding	340 kcal	130 kcal	62%	15.7g
Apfelstrudel	pudding	530 kcal	320 kcal	40%	5.1g
Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte	pudding	573 kcal	315 kcal	45%	13.3g
Streuselkuchen	pudding	405 kcal	289 kcal	29%	9.5g
Bienenstich	pudding	442 kcal	269 kcal	39%	12.5g
Rote Grutze	pudding	400 kcal	187 kcal	53%	9g
Quarkkeulchen	pudding	349 kcal	259 kcal	26%	17.1g
Stollen	pudding	443 kcal	286 kcal	35%	7.8g
Apfelkuchen	pudding	481 kcal	260 kcal	46%	7.9g
Griessbrei	pudding	318 kcal	227 kcal	29%	10.8g

The ones I wouldn’t touch

Dishes drafted for this book that didn’t survive. If every dish survived lightening, that chapter would be a marketing device and you should trust none of the rest.

Rouladen. A Roulade is a thin slice of beef spread with mustard, wrapped round bacon, onion and a gherkin, tied, browned and braised for two hours in a dark gravy. Look at that list. The mustard is 60 kcal per 100g. The gherkin is 12. The onion is 40. The beef is already a lean flat slice because it has to roll. The only fat in the whole thing is the bacon inside and the butter in the gravy, and cutting either of them takes perhaps 40 kcal a serving off a dish that is mostly braised beef. I tried it several ways. Trimming the beef harder made the rolls fall apart. Dropping the bacon took out the thing that makes the middle taste of anything. Building the gravy on stock instead of cream worked, and that swap is already in the kit on page 12, so it does not need a recipe of its own. Make them properly. Use good mustard, tie them tightly, give them the full two hours, and serve them with red cabbage that has had half the sugar taken out, which is where the saving on that plate actually lives.
Kartoffelsalat. There are two German potato salads. The northern one is bound with mayonnaise. The southern one is dressed with hot stock, vinegar, mustard and a little bacon fat. The swap kit tells you to make the southern one, and that entry is doing all the work there is to do here. It is in chapter 2 because it is a swap, not a recipe: you are not lightening a dish, you are choosing the other regional version, which happens to be better and happens to be lighter. I drafted a lightened southern salad anyway. It came out 4% below the one it was compared against, which is a rounding difference, and the only way I could make the number look better was to add chicken to it, at which point it stops being a potato salad. Make the Bavarian one. Slice the potatoes hot so they drink the stock, be sparing with the bacon fat, and eat it warm.
Linsensuppe. Lentil soup with vinegar. Lentils, root vegetables, a little smoked sausage, a slug of vinegar at the end. It comes in at 436 kcal a serving with 31g of protein in it. I drafted a lighter version and it came out at 484, which is heavier, and the protein for the calories went DOWN. Both of those are the wrong direction, and it took me a while to work out why: there is nothing in a Linsensuppe doing a job that a lighter ingredient could do instead. The sausage is the seasoning, the lentils are the point, and the vinegar is free. This is one of the best everyday dinners in Europe and it does not need me. Make it, use good vinegar, and put a slice of dark rye next to it.
Bohnen mit Speck. Green beans, a little smoked bacon, savory, done. 159 kcal a serving, of which the beans are 31 and the herb is nothing. Render the bacon slowly and pour off what runs, which is swap 2 in the kit, and you have taken out most of what there was to take. Everything else I tried made the dish heavier or barely moved it. This is a side dish that has been getting the balance right for about 300 years without anybody's help. Make it as it is.
Brezel. Flour, water, salt, a little yeast, and a dip in lye before it goes in the oven. That is the whole recipe. There is no fat in a pretzel at all beyond whatever is naturally in the flour. I got a version down by 6 kcal. Six. On a 461 kcal item, which is a rounding difference and not a recipe. Buy them fresh, eat them the day they are made, and put mustard on them. If you want a lighter one, make them smaller. That is genuinely the only lever there is.

Where the numbers come from

FoodData Central, SR Legacy Release (April 2018). U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. Public domain (U.S. Government work).
McCance & Widdowson's Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFID) 2021. Public Health England / Office for Health Improvement and Disparities. Open Government Licence v3.0.

Retrieved 2026-08-21. Nothing in these books is dietary or medical advice. Danny Vale is a cook.