Recipe Sources before 1600:�The German Corpus
A tour of familiar companions and offbeat favourites
Part I: The Manuscript Tradition
The guoter spise Tradition
Buoch von guoter spise
Oldest recipe collection in German (c. 1350), 101 recipes
Later copies exist
Recipes suggest the existence of an established court cuisine
We lack evidence for this due to strong prejudice against fraz
86. Einen fladen (A fladen )
Der einen fladen machen wölle von fleische. der nem fleisch. daz do ge von dem lumbel oder von dem wenste. und nim knücken und daz daz wol gesoten werde. und hackez cleyne. und ribe halb als vil keses drunder. und mengez mit eyern. daz ez dicke werde. und würtzez mit pfeffer. und slahe ez uf ein blat von teyge gemacht und schiuz ez in einen ofen. und laz ez backen. und giv in dar also heiz.
He who wants to make a fladen of meat. He takes meat from the sirloin or of the belly. And take bony pieces of meat (possibly ribs) and that that becomes well boiled. And cut it small. And grate half as much cheese thereunder. And mix it with eggs, (so) that it becomes thick. and spice it with pepper and pound (put) it on a leaf made of dough and shove it in an oven and let it bake and give it there also hot.
http://www.medievalcookery.com/etexts/buch.html
Meister Hans – a tradition?
The putative parent manuscript dates to 1460
Master Hans, cook to the lord of Wurttemberg – a real person? Uncertain
Recipe parallels exist in earlier manuscripts
The Meister Hans contains over 200 recipes of various kinds in no particular order
The original Meister Hans
Recipe collection internally dated to 1460
Mixes recipes, mnemonics, anecdotes, some medical
and technical material
Longest recipe is a showpiece ‚garden‘
Some entries include a first person narrator
https://www.culina-vetus.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/
08/Recipes-from-Meister-Hans.pdf
Recipe #81 Ain grüne sals die mach also vnd behalt die
A green sauce, make it thus and keep it
Item take sage and onions, parsley and sorrel old and young. Pick the herbs and wash them and dry them in the sun. Take with that pepper, galingale, ginger, cinnamon, anise, coriander, cubebs, cloves, mace, grains of paradise, and a little artickel (unknown), that makes the sage nice. And take dried white bread and make a powder of all of this. When you wish to eat it, temper it with wine or with vinegar. And keep (store) this as long as you please.
Parallels to Meister Hans
The Rheinfränkisches Kochbuch
Expensive manuscript produced in mid-15th century, 76 recipes
Edited by Thomas Gloning for Tupperware Germany
Almost entirely courtly cuisine, many Lenten dishes
https://www.culina-vetus.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Rheinfrankisches-Kochbuch.pdf
46 If you would make fritters of fresh cheese (czeger) and cheese (kese), make a dough of flour and of fresh cheese in equal amounts, break eggs into it, colour it, and (see to it) that the dough be thick. Afterward, take a plate and place a ladleful of the dough on it- Scrape it off lengthwise with a knife into hot fat and you will have fine fritters (literally: fried cakes). Serve them with sugar.
The Teutonic Order Collection
Fragmentary manuscript collection found in the archives of the Teutonic Order at Königsberg (today Kaliningrad), 33 recipes
High German, parallels with South German sources
Probably second half of 15th century
Original may be held in berlin
20. If you want to make a good mortar cake
Cut white bread into dice, break eggs into pieces and put the bread into it. Cut nutmeg and mace into it and make it yellow (with saffron). Cut fried chicken into it, though you may also use livers or stomachs or feet. Place it on the embers, pour the filling into it, let it bake and serve it forth.
21. If you want to make mortar cake
Grind white bread finely, beat eggs into it, make it yellow (with saffron), season it well and cut nutmeg and mace into it. Put lard in a mortar, put it in the embers and pour it in there. When it is baked, cut it in slices.
Mittelniederdeutsches Kochbuch
Probably late 15th or early 16th century, monastic context from Ostfalen��Edited by Wiswe, 103 recipes��Only surviving Low German manuscript source known to date��https://www.culina-vetus.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Mittelniederdeutsches-Kochbuch.pdf
2 A good puree of apples make thus: Put the apples into an earthen cookpot unpeeled and let them bake in an oven. And they shall be goderlinghe or flackeeppele (sorts of apples). When they are baked, pass them through a colander (dorchslach). Next, pass them through a good clean cloth. Then set them to the fire and let it boil. Add honey and pounded rice searched through a spice sieve (crudesef – a fine sieve). Also add saffron, ginger, and cloves and pepper. And you may keep this puree for a long time.
Fragments and minor collections
Numerous minor fragments from the fifteenth century survive, often bound with medical and astrological texts
Some are marginal collections produced by individuals, others clearly designed as nasmed recipe collections
Ehlert, T. (ed & trsl): Münchner Kochbuchhandschriften aus dem 15. Jahrhundert, Tupperware Deutschland, Frankfurt 1999
Meister Eberhard
17. If you want to make three dishes out of one fish.
Take a pike and wrap a wet cloth around its middle part and lay it on a griddle. Salt it and and let it roast, and the front part you must dust with flour and pour molten lard over. Pour hot wine over the cloth. The hind part roasts by itself on the griddle.
The German liber de ferculis
Iambombinus Cremonensis translated an Arabic text on culinary arts.
A Middle Upper German translation survives in a Bavarian collection as puch von den chosten
Recipes likely inapplicable, text intended for medical use
Ylva Schwinghammer, Wolfgang Holanik, Andrea Hofmeister-Winter, Lisa Glänzer unter Mitarbeit von Johanna Damberger, Speisen auf Reisen. Das frühneuhochdeutsche Púch von den chósten und seine Wurzeln im lateinischen Liber de ferculis und im arabischen Minhādj al-bayān in synoptischer Edition mit Übersetzung und überlieferungskritischem Kommentar (Grazer mediävistische Schriften: Quellen und Studien 2), Graz 2019
Three manuscripts from Augsburg
Sixteenth-century recipe collections associated with Augsburg patrician families
Sabina Welser: 205 recipes, dated 1553
Maria Stengler: original lost, 19th c. edition survives
Philippine Welser: probably dates to reign in Tyrol
To make yellow rice porridge
Take rice, boil it well in almond milk and then force it through a cloth. Add sugar so it is well sweetened, make it yellow, return it to the pot, let it boil and stir it often so that it does not burn.
(Philippine Welserin p. 78 r)
If you wish to make good salted tongues, these are best made in January, this way the stay good through the entire year.
First, take 25 tongues, or as many as you wish, take one after the other and beast them before and behind on a chopping block. That way they are made long. Then grind up salt and coat the tongues in it. Take a nice cask, lay salt into its bottom, then lay the tongues into it, at first side by side, then salt again until it is all white from the salt, and so on, one layer of tongues, then salt, until you've put it all in. Then you must press it so that the brine covers it, and after it has stood for 50 days, hang them in the smoke for four days. Then they are done enough, afterwards they hang exposed to the air. That way you have good dried tongues.
(Sabina Welserin #27)
To fry tart cherries so the batter remains white.
Take nice flour, mixthe batter with cold water and beat it well,like the dough for yeast cake, until it shows bubbles. Make it runny with pure egg white like any other batter for cherries. Tie the cherries well together at the tops of their stems so they spread apart at the bottom, because they grow large and bubbly. Have your fat as hot as possible and only dip them in and take them out again. Thus it is made.
(Stenglerin #92)
The Klosterkochbuch mystery
Original lost, survives only in 19th c. Edition
Allegedly found in Dominican monastery ruin in Leipzig
Recipes have clear parallels in late 16th-c Oeconomia by Johannes Coler
There is no known print link
Part II: The Printed Sources
The Nuremberg Kuchenmaistrey
First printed in Nuremberg in 1485
Several manuscript copies survive as well
Reprints from 1486 onwards almost constant
5 Books, over 200 entries
Dietetic advice, recipes and medicinal preparations
Forthcoming translation by V. Bach with Ellipsis Imprints, Durham (projected summer 2022)
3. xxii. Item in another way that is called flappy fritters (lappenküchlein) without parsley and wine. Make a stiff dough with eggs and wine, the third part is milk. Draw it out on a board and roll it out with a rolling pin, (made) of white flour, not too thin or too thick, long and narrow. Make flat sheets (lappen) of it nicely twisted on the tips or shaped in front like oak leaves or linden leaves, what shapes you wish. If you want them brown, fry them well, and if you want them yellow, make the dough with saffron mixed in wine, or with milk green with parsley juice or whatever (else) colours things green, (or) blue from cornflowers. These flappy fritters (leppischen kuchlein) are good to eat with all kinds of sauces as a roast course.
Platina and the Tacuinum
German translation of Platina Von der eerlichen, zimlichen, auch erlaubten Wolust des Leibs, Placimontanus 1542
German translation of the Tacuinum Sanitatis, Schachtafeln der Gesuntheyt, Strasbourg 1533
Balthasar Staindl
Balthasar Staindl, cook in Dillingen
Ein sehr kuenstlich und nutzlichs Kochbuch... (first edition 1544)
Reprints throughout the century
Focus on representative cuisine, lengthy dicussion of almond dishes
https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10990136?page=,1
To make an almond cheese that has as many colours as you like
Make it thus: Pour the abovementioned colours into a cup, let it gel one finger high, then pour more of another colour on top, never hot, only cold so they do not mingle. Pour in as many colours as you like until the cup is full. When it has all boiled and gelled, dip the cup in hot water, take it out again soon and invert it over a plate. Then you have all the colours. Then cut the almond milk all lengthwise, then you can see all colours one after the other.
(Staindl # I.20)
Bock and Ryff – food knowledge
Walter Ryff, medical writer
Alphabetical list of foods and their properties, treatise on invalid cookery
Hieronymus Bock, physician and botanist
Teutsche Speißkammer (1550)
Patriotic defense of German food
In the kitchens today, all dishes and courses and all beverages have to be salted or cooked with sugar. How healthy such food and beverages are, I will leave for everyone to find out for himself. Myself, I regard such foods and drink as unhealthy, notwithstanding that there is a saying (possibly made in the kitchen) that reads that no food could be spoiled with sugar.
Teutsche Speißkammer p. 32
Ars Magirica and Libellus de lacte – Swiss Latin prints
Scholarly texts with few or no recipes
Jodocus Willich: Ars Magirica hoc est Conquinaria… Zurich, probably 1563
https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb10990136?page=,1
Conrad Gessner: Libellus de lacte, Zurich 1541
https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/Q3O25P54RAYNAQE24H32I7N6Q3XFF4SX
Koekerye and Klene Kakeboeck
Two Low German prints:
Koekerye (Lübeck 1570) by Johan Balhorn
Dat klene Kakeboeck (Hamburg c. 1580) by Joachim Loew
Both heavily based on Kuchenmaistrey
Short, originally not bound.
Related to Danish Koge Bok (Copenhagen 1616)
21 Oxtongue��Take an oxtongue and stick it with cloves and cinnamon, stick it on a spit and let it roast. Drizzle it with butter and spice powder, and when it is done, cut it in two along the middle and place it in a wooden bowl. Take a cookpot and put in it wine, sugar, cinnamon, spice powder, pepper, Brundoeck, and currants, let it boil together and pour it over (the tongue).
https://www.culina-vetus.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/Koekerye-1570.pdf
Marx Rumpolt – the giant
Marx Rumpolt, personal cook to the Archbishop-Elector of Mainz
Ein New Kochbuch (1581)
Over 1000 recipes, elaborate edition with copious illustrations
Highly fashionable cuisine, anecdotes, first-person narration
The whole forepart cooked in a black sauce, with onions. Take the forepart, cut it into pieces, take water and vinegar, catch the blood, strain it over this, cut onions and apples into it and a little bread, let it all boil together, take it out and pass the blood (sauce) though a hair cloth so it becomes rather thick. Fry onions in pork lard, season them with pepper and cloves, add them to the blood and let them boil with it. Clean out a pot, put the blood into it and let it cook till it is done. Make it nicely sour and not sweet, because hares are not good when they are sweet. You can make a sauce of apples or almonds to go with it, or strew Triget over it. (Rumpolt p. XLIX r)
Franz de Rontzier
Cook to the duke of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel
Kunstbuch von mancherley Essen… (1598)
Long list of recipes, few details. Obvious attempt to copy Rumpolt with comparatively limited success
There is a 1990 reprint, but no online scan
Anna Wecker – instant bestseller
Anna Wecker: Ein koestlich new kochbuch… (1597)
Immediate success, numerous reprints
Widow of town physician Johann Jacob Wecker
Focus on invalid cookery, very detailed descriptions of technique
A hearty dish of dried dough
Take eggs, as many as you like, the yolk is best, add enough pepper, ginger, saffron, nutmeg and mace together with all kinds of good spices that please you, salt it a little and stir it into a dough with good flour. Try it, if it is not strong enough with spices, season it more as long as it is not strong enough. It should be very dry. If you would have a little sugar in it, that is your choice.
Then work it as dry as you can, roll or twist it into thin ribbons about as thick as a proper knife’s back, cut it as thin as wood shavings (Hobelspaen) or very finely cut root vegetables. Roll out the ribbons of dough three or four fingers wide, then cut them across. That way you get different lengths. Lay it out on paper sheets and place it in a baking oven after the bread has come out, or in winter into a stove’s inside (Ofenroehr oder kachel). Do not let it burn, but see that they turn nicely crisp to the extent that the dough allows because of the saffron.
Keep them in a box in a dry place and they stay good for a quarter of a year or longer. When you have a weak meat soup, throw one or ten or twelve into it. And if you want to serve it, let it boil up once or three times, that way they swell up and the broth tastes very good. (Even) if it is not bad in itself, it becomes better still. Serve it over sops.
This work is licensed under�a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.�It makes use of the works of�Kelly Loves Whales and Nick Merritt.