Galantine of fish from the Königsberg MS

One more, a close parallel with Cod Pal Germ 551.- I am convinced these are pretty much the same book at this point.

[[5]] Willtu ein Galhartt von Fischenn:

If you want to make a jelly (Galhartt) of fish

Take a pike and boil it well and remove its flesh (Gebrett) and take Lauck (lye?) and place it on the coals and let it boil and …. the flesh and put into it … and (add?) enough sugar and mix it well so that it is neither too thick nor too thin and can be poured like an electuary. Put it into a serving bowl.

This is a fascinating recipe, and one I will be happy to experiment with once I have the time and finances (pike is not cheap). It advertises itself as a galantine (galhartt is cognate with gallert and related to galrey/galreid), but it really sounds more like a fish candy. This version has gaps and, perhaps even more worryingly, what looks like a serious transmission error. The parallel in Cod Pal Germ 551 clearly indicates that the fish is cooked with honey, and though lye may not have felt badly out of place in a world where it was frequently used to soften dried and dry-salted fish, it would be pretty disastrous applied to raw pike.

The Königsberg MS was preserved in the archive of the Teutonic Order in Königsberg (today Kaliningrad) in Baltic East Prussia, though its language suggests that it belongs to a Central or South German background. It is not associated with any name that I am aware of and is dated to the late 15th century purely on the scribal hand. The recipe types match South German sources of that time. It was published in Gollub (Hg.): Aus der Küche der deutschen Ordensritter. in: Prussia 31 (1935) pp. 118-124.

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