Fried filled apples from the Kuchenmaistrey

These sound interesting, but challenging

3. xxxi. Make another fried dish of filled apples thus: Take sour apples, as many as you wish, peel them, cut them apart through the middle (scheüblet) and hollow out both parts. Get roast apples or quinces or roasted pears, grate white bread into it with sugar and salt, and you may or may not spice it. And fill both parts of the apples with it, without eggs. Push (streich) the filling into the apples and press it in well. Make a batter of honey and wine that is coloured yellow. Coat the apples in this and stick them together with a skewer or toe them together with a string. Fry them in fat. Serve them, take off the string or take out the skewer, and set it on the table. Strew sugar or honey on them.

Bratäpfel are still a popular part of German winter cuisine, but we usually do not deep-fry them these days. A lot of recipes from the medieval period, including this very elaborate one from Cod Pal Germ 551, envisions exactly that. This one has interesting instructions for the preparation process, but I think I prefer a different filling.

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 (mastery of the kitchen) was the earliest printed cookbook in German (and only missed being the earliest printed cookbook in any language by a few years). The book 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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