Apple and Pear Mus

Another set of short recipes from Philippine Welser before going into a very busy week. This is the conclusion of the chapter on Mus:

169 If you want to make an apple Mus

Take the apples, peel them, and add wine when you set them to cook. When you have steamed them enough, pass them through a colander and break 3 or 4 eggs into it. Add sugar, ginger, and saffron to it and put it into a pot. Let it boil well together again and stir it often.

170 If you want to make an apple Mus

Boil the apples well and pass them through a cloth. Grate semel bread crumbs into it and take 10 eggs to each mess (disch). Beat a little milk with the eggs and pour that into the mashed apples. Also add the grated semel breadcrumbs and saffron and sugar. Stir it well together. Put fat into a pot, let it get hot, and pour the apples into it. Set it over the coals and let it boil. Stir it so it becomes shaggy (krauß).

171 If you want to make an apple Mus in a bowl

Take apples and cut them into thin slices. Put them into a bowl and add sugar and cinnamon. Pour (bren) hot fat over them, pour on a little wine, and set it on a griddle. Wrap a wet cloth around the rim (refft) and put coals underneath, and let it boil until it is enough. Serve it warm.

172 If you want to make a pear Mus

Take good pears and boil them in wine. Add salt and pass them through a cloth. Add sugar and spices, put it into a pot, and let it boil. Stir it often and serve it warm.

It is the season for apples again, and time to think about what to do with them. Apples as well as pears generally played a very prominent role in the German culinary world, and Philippine Welser’s collection records ways of putting them into pies and tarts and making fritters and pancakes. By comparison, these are very pedestrian approaches, but Apfelmus continues to have a cherished place on many tables.

There is very little about these recipes that is distinctive or exceptional. A Mus of steamed fruit bound with egg or with breadcrumbs is very much a standard dish that we find in many sources. The method of cooking the fruit in a sealed bowl is more interesting, but far from unique. But of course all of this is liable to produce tasty results. Apples and pears are delicious. Often, the simplest way of treating them can be the best.

If you aim to recreate them, it is important to note that though these recipes contain sugar, they are not necessarily sweet. We associate apples with dessert, but that was not the case then. In the fifteenth and sixteenth century, apples featured in sauces for meat, fillings for roasts and poultry, and fish and meat pastries. These Mus dishes can be sweet, but they can equally be savoury and spicy, with just a bit of sugar added for the sake of fashion.

Philippine Welser (1527-1580), a member of the prominent and extremely wealthy Welser banking family of Augsburg, was a famous beauty of her day. Scandalously, she secretly married Archduke Ferdinand II of Habsburg in 1557 and followed him first to Bohemia, then to Tyrol. A number of manuscripts are associated with her, most famously a collection of medicinal recipes and one of mainly culinary ones. The recipe collection, addressed as her Kochbuch in German, was most likely produced around 1550 when she was a young woman in Augsburg. It may have been made at the request of her mother and was written by an experienced scribe. Some later additions, though, are in Philippine Welser’s own hand, suggesting she used it.

The manuscript is currently held in the library of Ambras Castle near Innsbruck as PA 1473 and was edited by Gerold Hayer as Das Kochbuch der Philippine Welser (Innsbruck 1983).

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 *