Lung patties in liver sauce from the Kuchenmaistrey

German doesn’t really have a word for ‘offal’. It’s meat.

2. xi. Item, you make a good liver galantine (Lebersultz) thus: Take good calf lungs (gelung) and boil it cleanly. Strain off the broth and reserve it, and do not oversalt it. Then take the liver and fine bread and soak that (the bread) in wine boiled with honey. Pound the liver and the bread with that, pass it through a cloth into a separate bowl and keep it.

If you wish the galantine (sultz) to set firmly (hart gestee), take the first broth and boil calves’ feet in it and four small basses and two bay leaves. And soak fine bread in the same broth and pass it through with the broth. (After) the same broth as (mentioned) before was passed through, make a (galantine) broth of it and stir it well (into the liver?) and season it with good spices and salt. You may colour it yellow or not, only it must be pure and well skimmed when it is passed through. Taste it well and pour it over (the meat) and let it chill in an airy place.

[…]

2. xiiii. The other patties of lungs make thus. The heart and the spleen are well chopped and pounded in a mortar with hard-boiled eggs and grated gingerbread (geriben leckuchen). Add some salt, thus they are sufficiently made. Knead it with raw eggs and make balls of it which you boil like chickens. Lay them in a liver sauce (sulz) (covering them) all around with other meat into a large container and keep them in a cellar to guard against cats.

The issue what exactly a sulz or galrat is does not become any less murky with this recipe, but it clearly shows what it was originally for: to preserve cooked meats. This is abread-thickened sauce that would work just fine on its own,. but the (optional) addition of gelatin will make it firmer and more effective. It is not a Sülze in the modern sense, but very likely a precursor on the path starting with the Libellus de arte coquinaria’s ‘lords’ sauce’ (a good modern redaction by Joyce White is found here).

I will continue posting recipes from the Nuremberg Kuchenmaistrey produced around 1490, but my mode will change. Instead of translating one daily and posting it here, I will try to use what time there is to translate as much as I can and post only some of them here. Once the entire text is done, I will try to get it published either as a book, or online.

The Kuchenmaistrey was the earliest printed cookbook in German (and only missed being the earliest printed cookbook in any language by a few years). The Kuchenmaistrey (mastery of the kitchen) gave rise to a vibrant culture of amended and expanded manuscript copies as well as reprints spanning almost a century. The recipes seem designed to appeal to a wealthy, literate and cosmopolitan clientele.

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