Meat-topped Flatbreads

The Mondseer Kochbuch includes several recipes for meat-topped fladen, most of them with the same title, but slightly different content:

79 A fladen of meat, cheese, and eggs

Take meat of lamb or belly meat and take quinces, and see that it is all boiled well. Chop it small and grate into it as much cheese, and mix it with eggs so it becomes thick. Season it well with pepper and spread (slach) it onto a sheet made of dough and and put it into the oven. Let it bake and serve it.

80 A fladen of meat, cheese, and eggs in a different way

Take well-boiled meat from the loins and chop it small and grate a fourth part (i.e. a quarter as much) of cheese into it and mix it well with egg yolks. Stir in seasoning and put it onto a sheet (of dough) and break entire eggs on it, and thus serve it.

82 A fladen of meat, cheese, and eggs

Take well-boiled meat from the belly and chop it small. Take a fourth part (i.e. a quarter as much) of cheese with it and break eggs into it. Also add chicken livers and cloves, and slice a pear lengthwise and strew it among this. Place it on a sheet (of dough) and let it bake, and serve it.

83 A fladen of meat, cheese, and eggs

Take meat from the loins (lumbflaisch) and boil it well, chop it small, and grate enough cheese into it. Also break enough eggs into it and season it well, set it on a sheet of dough and bake it well.

84 A fladen of meat, cheese, and eggs

Take meat from the belly and boil it [and chop it] small, and add quartered walnuts and enough spices. Also add bacon and eggs, lay it on a sheet (of dough) and let it bake.

The Buoch von guoter Spise has parallel recipes (86-95), and interestingly includes even more elaborate preparations and complex ways of serving them that are going to need a post of their own. Here, we are looking at the recipes that made it into the Mondseer Kochbuch. It is an interesting class of dishes, something like a Flammkuchen or Speckkuchen, I suspect, and it works well as an entry-level dish for people who do not trust exotic foods, but enjoy meat. Fladen generally were flat breads, generally with some kind of topping, that were baked in the residual heat of an oven after the bread was removed. These, using expensive meats, cheese, and spices, likely had their own oven or were baked under an upturned bowl in the embers. If we can trust the Buoch von guoter Spise, they could be very large. We can imagine them served like a large pizza, set down in the middle of the table.

The Mondseer Kochbuch is a recipe collection bound with a set of manuscript texts on grammar, dietetics, wine, and theology. There is a note inside that part of the book was completed in 1439 and, in a different place, that it was gifted to the abbot of the monastery at Mondsee (Austria). It is not certain whether the manuscript already included the recipes at that point, but it is likely. The entire codex was bound in leather in the second half of the fifteenth century, so at this point the recipe collection must have been part of it. The book was held at the monastery until it passed into the Vienna court library, now the national library of Austria, where it is now Cod 4995.

The collection shows clear parallels with the Buoch von guoter Spise. Many of its recipes are complex and call for expensive ingredients, and some give unusually precise quantities and measurements. It is edited in Doris Aichholzer’s “Wildu machen ayn guet essen…” Drei mittelhochdeutsche Kochbücher: Edition, Übersetzung, Quellenkommentar, Peter Lang, Berne et al. 1999

This entry was posted in Uncategorised and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *