More of our peasant food experiments. These recipes are two previously posted varieties of bread dumplings from the Oeconomia ruralis et domestica:
(marginalia: To make dumplings in another way)
Or take white bread (Semmel), lay them in water and let them soften in it. When it is soft, press out the water cleanly and put fried bacon on it, take finely chopped thyme and stir that in. Then break pure (bahr) eggs into it and add pepper and saffron. Then take flour and stir it all together so that it becomes like a dough and place one dumpling (klüp) after another into the (boiling) veal with a spoon when the meat is done, and let it boil up together.
This one is quite close to the way we still make Semmelknödel today, though we usually add toasted or fried bread cubes rather than bacon. We opted for a cautious approach, following the modern way, and it worked out well. Four breadrolls, three eggs, half a cup of chopped bacon, and just enough flour to bind it together. The dumplings cooked slowly in barely simmering water until they rose to the surface, and the result was quite satisfying.
And the other:
To make flour dumplings (Meelkloesse)
(marginalia: to make flour dumplings)
Cut the crust off a Semmel and cut cubes (viereckichte stuecklein) of bacon and fry it together in a pan. Throw it into a bowl, take milk, salt it, and stir in an egg. Then scatter (schuette) fine wheat flour on the fried matter (das geroehste), pour on the mixed matter (das gequirlete), and do not make the dumplings too hard and not too thin. First of all, set water to boil by the fire, and when it boils, lay the dumplings into it with a spoon. If you wish to cook meat with them, boil the meat in a separate pot and add it to the dumplings.
This is a little stranger, and also not as easily interpreted. I opted to read it as clusters of toasted bread pieces held together by a batter. We cubed the bread and that bacon, broiwned both in a pan and let them cool. Then we dusted them heavily with flour and added the egg mix, stirring until everything was coated. The dumplings were a challenge to shape, takiung just the right amount of pressure between wet hands so as not to disintegrate, and I used a spoon to lower them into the water. Against my expectations, they held togeher and came out quite tasty.
This recipe, incidentally, may be broadly related to a bread pudding described in Meister Hans (recipe #190):
Now he takes the innards of it and washes it nicely and makes it nice and takes bacon and fine white bread that he cuts into cubes. Take as many eggs as you wish and mix the eggs and bacon into it and fill the neck and the wämlein (one of the stomachs) and let it boil nicely and cook it separately, that way it stays white.
Bread cubes and bacon, bound with eggs, here cooked in the stomach and oesophagus of a calf. We experimentally wrapped part of the mixture in a floured pudding cloth (not having any fresh stomachs on hand) and the result was quite encouraging.
One more dumpling recipe to follow tomorrow.