When you go to a German market in the spring or fall, you will find the Green Sauce herbs wrapped together in a bouquet - with the recipe on the wrapping paper. You need about equal parts of the following herbs - measure by the cup after chopping. The rule of thumb is that you need 7 fresh herbs total; you are perfectly free to use less of something you don't like, and add more of something you do like - this process is called "abschmecken" (taste and perfect) - putting your personal twist on a recipe,
Add a smaller amount of Burnet Saxifrage and Lemon Balm.
You will also need Italian white wine vinegar, salt, white pepper, and equal parts of plain yoghurt and sour cream. You will want to add 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise and about a half a teaspoon of vinegar to one cup of the yoghurt/sour cream mix.The mix should taste creamy, not sour like a salad dressing. You can use the fat-free variety of the sour cream, yoghurt and mayonnaise. Achopped onion and minced garlic can be good additions as well.
If the sauce is served with boiled eggs: some people take the egg yolks from the hard boiled eggs and grind them up and add this to the mix to give the sauce more body. This sauce was traditionally made after Easter to use up all the painted Easter Eggs (if real hard boiled eggs were used:)
Chop up the herbs (use the pulse on your kitchen machine, take care not to turn the herbs into paste, you are not making pesto :) and stir them into the yoghurt/sour cream mix: you are aiming for a consistency of the salad dressing that is sold in glass jars in the refrigerated section of the vegetable aisle.
You may want to chop up and add cornichons (imported). You can serve the sauce with warm potatoes (boiled with the peel on "Pellkartoffel") or with hard boiled eggs. Refrigerate or freeze leftovers.
Of course the history of the green sauce, its origin, the variations in the recipes, and Goethe's love for the dish are much more complicated than this....I have found some fascinating readings on the topic...
