Luxembourg has a habit of claiming more than one national dish, and nobody seems to mind. Bouneschlupp is the soup half of the arrangement: green beans, potatoes, onion and a little leek and celeriac, thickened with a pale roux and given body by bacon or a sliced smoked sausage. Versions turn up across the border in Saarland, Lorraine and the Belgian Gaume, which tells you how sensible an idea it is.

It is a soup that does honest work. It feeds a crowd from one pot, reheats better than it first tasted, and stands up to a cold paddock at the Eifel in late September, which is precisely when the Luxembourg Grand Prix was run at the Nürburgring in 1997 and 1998. Serve it in mugs and nobody needs a table.

The bacon and sausage

Ingredients

• 6 oz (170 g) thick cut smoked bacon
• 8 oz (225 g) smoked sausage

The soup

Ingredients

• 3 tablespoons (45 g) butter
• 1 large onion
• 1 leek
• 1/2 cup (75 g) celeriac
• 3 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 7 cups (1.7 liters) water or light stock
• 1 1/2 lb (680 g) green beans
• 1 lb (450 g) waxy potatoes
• 1 teaspoon dried summer savory
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 cup (120 g) sour cream

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