I know I announced I would reduce the frequency of my postings, but this is not a time to disrupt a regular thing that I know some people take comfort in. My thoughts are with friends in the United States and Ukraine whose future has become uncertain. There is very little I can do for them, but I think providing this little piece of joy is something useful. Today, a winter comfort food from Philippine Welser’s collection:
229 To make roast quinces
Take the quinces, peel them, and hollow them out. First take off the stems, then hollow them out, and put in sugar, raisins, and cinnamon sticks filled with sugar put in entire. Put the stems back in place into the holes that you cut out. Set them into a glazed earthen pan with a lid and sprinkle sugar over them. Cover the pan and put coals on top and underneath, and let them roast until they are soft. They should have a little liquid (bryelin), that way it is proper.
The recipe is straighforward and more commonly used with apples today. Hollowing out quinces will pose an athletic challenge – they are very hard and unyielding – but the flavour profile sounds promising. I am not sure how much flavour a whole stick of cinnamon will actually convey to the fruit, but that will be worth finding out. I expect the cooking time to be considerably longer than for apples, too. Quinces are much tougher, but definitely worth engaging with.
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).