Today, I met with a few friends and we tried out medieval recipes. The temperatures outside militated for rich and hot foods, so we decided on fritters. One of them was from the Rheinfränkisches Kochbuch:
1 If you would make small fritters (kreppelin) in Lent, take nuts and figs and pound them small with each other and season it according to your will and heat (it in) oil and fry them (wrapped) in a leavened (erhabendem) dough in the way of dumpling-style fritters (kreppelin, modern German Krapfen) in a pan and serve them cold at the table, those are well-tasting fritters.
The filling turned out to be a challenge. The dried figs we had were so hard and dry they could barely be cut with a knife, so I ended up soaking them in hot water before putting them in a blender. Once theý were sufficiently mashed, I added a roughly equal amount of walnut meats and continued processing until they were combined into a paste.
Without instructions for the seasoning, I opted for a simple mix of dominant cinnamon with cloves, ginger, and nutmeg. The crust, too, was simple, a plain water dough leavened with yeast. I made it stiff and elastic to roll out and wrap around the filling tightly, like pierogi or ravioli with Typ 550 flour, a bread flour, and the consistency it produced was quite pleasant. They were fried in oil in a pan, drained on paper towels, and served warm, and they were quite good.