I was thrilled to get the message from Ellipsis Imprints today that the translation of the Kuchenmaistrey is now officially published. The book can be pre-ordered here in anticipation of its physical launch on 14 August.
This is going to be a very bare-bones book: just a commented translation of the text, with no redactions, no photos, and no historical deep-dive. Designed as an inexpensive paperback, it is meant as a resource for historical cooks and fellow food history nerds. I hope, in the future, to produce a volume that does justice to the depth of scholarship on German culinary history, but that will take time. The Kuchenmaistrey couldn’t wait that long.
To whet your appetite before I can post recipe redactions from the coming launch party (a smaller affair than the previous one), here is an interesting entry from the chapter on fritters:
3. xxxiiii. Make a filled fritter of sage thus: Take dried leützbirn (a variety of pear) and clean them (mach sie schon). Boil them soft and pound them in a mortar. Cook (rost) them in honey and wine moistly (woll feücht) and add spices and saffron to them, but no salt. Spread a sage leaf with this and cover it (the filling) with another leaf. Press them together carefully so that they stick together. Make a batter with honey and wine, draw them through this and fry them. Serve them and strew sugar on them and bring them to the table warm.
3. xxxv. Item another filled fritter of sage. Make a filling or roast apples as is described above without colouring it yellow or salting it (on gel vnd saltz), spread it on a sage leaf, press another onto it, make a batter as before, draw them through it one after the other and lift them carefully into the pan.
I wonder what this would taste like: Sage leaves stuck together around a spicy, fruity filling and fried in a crisp batter. The individual fritters are going to be quite small, tightly packed morsels of intense flavour. It is definitely something I want to try out one day.