Two fried recipes (one a bit mysterious) from Cod Pal Germ 551

51 Of a gestrecten (?) fritter

If you would make a gestroczteten (?) fritter, make a batter purely of eggs like (that for) small cakes made of flour, season it well, and make it yellow very well. And throw (?) gantzer helmm into the batter so they are moistened and take them out, fry them in lard and serve them.

52 A dish of a pancake of eggs

If you would make a good pancake of eggs for a lordly dish, take as many eggs as you wish and beat them well. Cut thinly sliced white wheaten bread (semel) into it in cubes and add a few raisins. And take enough fat into a pan, as you do with other pancakes, and pour the eggs into it and let it fry. And when it is done inside and out, throw it onto a work surface and chop good spices into it. Cut it in slices and serve it.

The first recipe looks straightforward, except I am not at all sure what it is that gets battered and fried. The second recipe is a standard bread pancake, found in all kinds of places, but it explains where recipe #45 got its confusing ending from. Accidentally transposing pieces of text was a thing before MS Word.

I owe thanks to my friend Libby Cripps for pointing me to the as yet untranslated fifteenth-century culinary recipe collection that is bound with similar works on fabric dyes and on medicine in the Heidelberg Cod Pal Germ 551. It looks, at first glance, unexceptional, but I will try to keep up a flow of recipes and see whether it has anything of particular interest to offer.

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