Horni Brown Swiss


The English language seems to be very fashionable here in Switzerland these days. This is nothing new. Already Gottfried Keller wrote 150 years ago in Der Schmied seines Glücks about a guy by the name of Hans Kabis, who couldn't make a fortune with such a name and therefore renamed himself John Kabys.

The trend seems to continue to this day. When my wife and I drive up to the mountains, we pass a silo with feed for our brown Swiss cattle. As cattle here in Switzerland is also known as Hornvieh (horned cattle), they wrote in big letters on their silo: Horni Brown Swiss.

"Der Schmied seines Glücks" = "the forger of his fortune." I don't know whether this story of Keller's has ever been translated into English.

The theme is recurrent in Keller's work though. Better known is his story: "Kleider machen Leute" = "clothes make people."

"Kabis" = "cabbage."

The German word for "cabbage" is "Kohl." The Swiss-German word is "chabis" (same root as "cabbage"). Yet since the Swiss-German word is entirely different from the German word, the Swiss usually don't remember the correct German word when they speak German, and so, they Germanized the Swiss word -> "Kabis."

Yet, "chabis" has also a second connotation. When a Swiss wants to say "nonsense," he often uses the term "chabis." Therefore, someone called "Chabis" has a hard time being taken seriously.

Why do the Swiss use their term for "cabbage" to denote "nonsense"? The explanation is actually quite simple.

Usually, cabbage is chopped into very small pieces before being eaten. Thus, if you take a fine line of thought and chop it into small pieces, like after each letter, for example, then place all of these letters in a bowl and mix them ... you can't make any sense out of them any longer. You get nonsense.

The Swiss are good at that.

You need a fine sheet of dough to make pasta. Italians cut the dough into stripes of different widths and throw those into water. In this way, they get noodles. The most narrow stripes produce angle-hair pasta; the widest cut stripes produce tagliatelle. In between, there are several other varieties.

The Swiss do it differently. They cut the letters of the alphabet out of the dough and throw them into chicken broth. They call the result buechstabesuppe (letter soup). Another Swiss invention.

Quote:

The Swiss do it differently. They cut the letters of the alphabet out of the dough and throw them into chicken broth. They call the result buechstabesuppe (letter soup). Another Swiss invention.

An echo from the past. When I was small and my parent's family was not especially well off (I suppose we were middle class, in those days we could afford a washing machine though not a refrigerator, telephone nor car). Sometimes, in a house with five young boys, the housekeeping budget became stretched in the last few days before dad's payday. In those days a daily newspaper was tuppence a copy and it had no competition, so used newspaper, sufficiently crunched up was an economical way of wiping one's bum if the bum paper ran out.

But coming back to Francois' description of buechstabesuppe (letter soup), Nestlé instant soups were a fixture on grocers' shelves. Three packets plus hot water would, with bread and an apple apiece afterward, feed a family of seven. Our favourite was the alphabet soup. I have not seen it in this part of the world for years.

Does Switzerland still have alphabet soup? Is there any move to create Arabic alphabet soup for those Muslims who can't find a mosque so decide to have a communal meal instead?

Originally Posted by roadkill

Does Switzerland still have alphabet soup? Is there any move to create Arabic alphabet soup for those Muslims who can't find a mosque so decide to have a communal meal instead?

Actually, I am not sure. It's a memory of childhood days. I haven't seen it since we moved back to Switzerland, but then again, I haven't been looking for it either.

My wife happens to have a girlfriend of hers visiting with her this afternoon ... well, she is not a girl, but a lady our own age.

So, I approached her and told her that, since she is known to know the right answers to all the important questions of life, she would surely know whether alphabet soup is still sold here in Switzerland.

Her answer was that she had asked that very same question just recently to another girlfriend of hers and was told that, yes, alphabet soup is still sold by Volg, a chain of (franchised) Swiss village markets.

So, now we all know ...

Campbell's alphabet soup is a traditional lunchtime staple here.

Andy Warhol discovered the can design to be fine art:

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