Two Meat Galantines

I am back to my recipes and will be posting two related ones today to make up for the fact I will probably not be sharing one tomorrow – I expect the day to be quite long. From the collection of Philippine Welser, following the fish galantine with its detailed instructions:

216 To make a meat galantine (flesch schultz)

Set the meat to cook in wine and add a little water to it. When you have scummed it, colour it yellow so the meat turns nicely yellow. When the meat is boiled, wash it clean and let it boil again. Afterwards, spice and sugar the broth, but strain it through a cloth before you season it so it is nice and clear. Blow away (remove) the fat on it. Scatter raisins, cinnamon, and ginger in the bowl and put the meat on it. Pour on the broth or (and?) stick almonds into it. Set the bowl in horse dung so it gels in summer.

217 To make a pork galantine (schweinen sultz)

Take a suckling pig or veal or some other pork, but especially a (piece?) of a sow, that is best. Parboil it a little in water, then add wine and vinegar, but not too much so it does not become too sour, and let it boil in that. Season it with saffron, pepper, and whole cinnamon, and put in sugar (to make it) as sweet as you want to have it. Let it boil together. Cover (bese) the bowl (with raisins and spices) and lay the meat on that. Let the broth become clear and pour it over the meat. Stick almonds in it and let it gel.

This is basically the same dish described for fish, so many of the instructions for adding the gelling agent and clarifying the broth do not need to be repeated. The end result is a bowl whose bottom is covered in dried fruit and spices, with pieces of meat encased in a translucent aspic whose surface is decorated with almonds, most likely individual blanched kernels stuck into the jelly in decorative patterns. Dishes like these were fashionable, often creatively elaborated, and surviving recipes describe many methods that are supposed to ensure it will gel. This must have been a major concern in the age before artificial refrigeration.

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).

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