Another recipe for ‘cheese knitwork’, this time from the Inntalkochbuch

This one is clearly a parallel to the twin recipes in Cod Pal Germ 551. I am still not entirely sure how to read it, but it certainly sounds interesting.

<<35>> Ein gefulcz von einem chäs

A gefulcz (felted dish?) of cheese

Take a marben (= mürben, brittle?) cheese and white bread grated together, more cheese than grated bread, and turn it out onto a board. Knead it with eggs so that it does not become too strong (hard), make cylinders (zöllöll, lit. logs) of that which are not too large, and cut them up. Take a mortar, put fat into it and place it by the fire and let it get hot. Then put the welkt (?) into it. Add as much sugar, raisins and spices as you like. Do not stir it around in the mortar (?) and move the mortar away from the fire only a bit so that it does not get cold.

I suppose the intended aim is some kind of knitwork or griddle of cheese fritters. That is not unknown – there is such a recipe for non-cheese dough. I have no real idea what it would look like or how it would be served, though. Perhaps the key to the dish is to generate cheese ‘strings’ like modern people do with pizza? That would explain the insistence of not letting it get cold.

The Inntalkochbuch is from a monastic library in Bavaria’s Inntal region (the Inn is a tributary of the Danube), dating to the late 15th/early 16th century. It is written in Upper German and strongly reflects local culinary traditions, though some of its recipes are commonplaces found elsewhere.

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