I have to be brief today: A recipe from the Innsbruck MS
113 If you would make a sauce, take parsley and sage and pfeffer chraut and chop all of that well. Catch dew with a white cloth, wash it (the herbs) with that, dry them, and keep them as long as you wish. And whenever you wish, prepare it with vinegar or with wine etc.
This is not an unusual recipe. ‘Green’ herb sauces are found everywhere in the European medieval tradition, including Germany’s. This one is interesting in that it describes an instant version made with dried herbs, but again, there are parallels for this. Portable sauces in general are an interesting subset of medieval cuisine that could prbably use more study than I gave it.
The Innsbrucker Rezeptbuch is a manuscript recipe collection from a South German/Austrian context. It dates to the mid-fifteenth century and survives as part of a set of medical and culinary texts bound together. The editor Doris Aichholzer published it together with two related manuscripts and drew attention to the less elaborate, more practical recipes. The manuscript is of unknown provenance, but has been owned by the Habsburg emperors since at least the early sixteenth century. It is now held at the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna. An edition, German translation and commentary can be found in Doris Aichholzer: Wildu machen ayn guet essen… Drei mittelhochdeutsche Kochbücher, Peter Lang Verlag Berne et al. 1999