If food magazines are good for anything, it is exposing one to bits of obscure culinary miscellany like oyster stout, or some new use for tangerine slices on raw pork chops, or the little dumplings in Swabian Maultaschensuppe. Swabia (or Schwaben) is an area of southern Germany often stereotypically derided for being full of dummkopfs, despite having produced Brecht, Einstein, Heidegger, and Herman Hesse, as well as some of the most elegant Spätburgunders going. The dumplings—maultasche—typically contain some combination of ground and smoked meat, spinach, and herbs in a pastry wrapping, and enjoy protected designation of origin (PDO) status within the EU, in doubtless more famous company with champagne, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Cornish pasties, and the like. The dumplings are also known as Herrgottsbescheißerle, or “little ones to cheat the lord.” The name supposedly derived from the practice of monks in the Maulbronn monastery (Maulbronn’s other claim to fame being that a young Hermann Hesse once tried to commit suicide there) “hiding” meat in pockets of dough during Lent on the rationale that it would disguise the act of rebellion from God.
It’s an appealing story, but it has either been wildly exaggerated over time or those monks are totally awesome. Because really, if true, it is more than just funny, it is implicitly heretical—not only because it makes a total mockery of Lent, but because it contravenes the doctrine of divine omniscience, which is a pretty ballsy theological move to make just to pretend you’re getting away with eating meat. I would argue that it has such an aura of the ridiculous that it is hard not to detect in it a note of spite, like Camus’s “Il n’est pas de destin qui ne se surmonte par le mépris” (“There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn”), or at least of irreverence—which, in this context, may be worse. And I suppose if we’re accepting that He Who Created the Universe can’t see beneath a paper-thin layer of dough, it’s maybe not such a stretch to assume that He was in the can or something the entire time you were preparing the dish, and so didn’t see you packing the meat in there in the first place. It conjures this image of a whole cloister of monks having a simultaneous crisis of faith, but rather than abandoning the ritual of study, prayer, and seclusion, they decide to spice up the routine by playing a sweet prank on God.
That it has to do with food is of obvious appeal for me, but I also just find it an immensely sympathetic sort of gesture, because, I mean, don’t we all sometimes want to hide from God? Won’t we join the monks someday, shrugging our shoulders, palms upturned in antic fashion as the hellfire licks and scorches our rascal chins?