18 A dish of infidel cake (heidenyschen kuchen)
Item if you would make an infidel cake for a lordly dish, take ten eggs and beat them well and take parsley with it and stir it in. Set a mortar on the coals, put in a spoonful of fat and let it get hot. Pour in the eggs and let it fry at a low temperature (kull pachen). Serve it whole on a serving dish.
This is most likely something somewhere between an omelet and Eierstich, and familiar from many other sources. What is surprising is that it is called ‘infidel cake’, a name that usually describes a dry, crisp fritter. The parallel in section one (yes, there is one) is known by the more familiar name of ‘May cake’. This may be explained by the fact that ‘Maischer Kuchen’ and ‘heidnischer Kuchen’ sound vaguely similar, but it certainly reinforces the impression that names in German medieval cookery can’t be trusted to say much about a dish.
34 A dish of a cake
If you would make a good May cake for a lordly dish, take up ten eggs and beat them well and add parsley to it and stir it together. Set a mortar on the coals, put in a spoonful of fat and let it get hot. Pour in the eggs and let then cook at a low temperature (kwl packen). And serve it whole in a serving bowl.
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.