A common bit of culinary sleight of hand
3. i. If you would make round eggs. Grate a little white bread. Take egg yolks without the white. Beat the bread and the yolks, nutmeg and salt together and fill the egg shells with it, and stir it vigorously with small wooden skewers until it is full. Take the head/top (gopflein) of another eggshell, brush it with egg white on the inside and invert it over the hole in the filled egg. Fry them in fat or roast them by a fire or you may boil them, as you wish. Made thus they are good, serve them.
Item this filling may also be filled into crawfish shells, with chopped parsley, sage or whatever (herbs), also horseradish or ground ivy (gunring, glechoma hederacea) and other good herbs. Thus roasted a little and pounded with spices (seasoned with powdered spices) served in a sauce as described above or dry, it is good whichever way you wish.
Refilling eggshells with all manner of spicy preparations is a common trick in German recipe collections. This recipe adds an interesting bit about how to reclose them before cooking.
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.