Part two of the turkey recipes from de Rontzier’s 1598 cookbook:
Chopped Dishes (Gehackte Essen) of Turkeys etc.
1 You cut the meat into small pieces, fry it in butter and season it with wine vinegar, apples cut in cubes, sugar and mace.
2 Item you cut it small and season it with drippings, wine, pepper and nutmeg and press bitter orange juice over it. Also lay the bitter oranges on top of it and let it fry until done etc.
3 Item you cut it small and place it in a silver dish together with wine, drippings, chestnuts and mace and let it fry until done etc.
4 You cut it small with hard-boiled egg yolks and season it with wine and beef broth.
5 Item you cut the breasts into small pieces, fry them in butter, and scramble them with eggs, season it with wine and pepper etc.
6 Item you fry the cut-up breasts in butter so that the butter does not turn brown, mix three or four egg yolks with wine, stir them into this and strew it with sugar etc.
7 Item you cut the breasts into small pieces, then pour capon or beef broth over the roast fowl so that it turns brown and then pour it over the cut meat. Let it cook and strew it with pounded nutmeg and serve it.
8 Item you cut the breasts into small pieces, season them with wine, sugar, almond kernels, large raisins, mace, pounded ginger, and drippings and let it cook etc.
9 Item you cut the breasts into long strips and place them in a silver dish. Pour melted butter over them and season them with pounded ginger, sugar, rosewater (read Rosen Wasser for Rosin Wasser – raisin water) and cream and let it cook. When you wish to serve it, strew it with sugar and squeeze bitter orange juice over it.
I had a long workday and can’t really comment much, but these are not in any way unusual for the time and social class. I wonder whether there really was raisin water or if it is the typo I suspect, but I can’t look into that now. Noted for later.
Franz de Rontzier, head cook to the bishop of Halberstadt and duke of Braunschweig, published his encyclopaedic Kunstbuch von mancherley Essen in 1598. He clearly looks to Marx Rumpolt’s New Kochbuch as the new gold standard, but fails to match it in engaging style or depth. He is thus overshadowed by the twin peaks of Marx Rumpolt and Anna Wecker. What makes his work interesting is the way in which he systematically lists versions of a class of dishes, illustrating the breadth or a court cook’s repertoire. He is also more modernly fashionable than Rumpolt. Looking to France rather than Italy and Spain for inspiration, and some of the dishes he first describes may be genuine innovations.