I’m breaking the routine of sixteenth-century fish recipes for a random rabbit hole. I was celebrating my birthday in the middle of bramble season and wanted to do something with that, so I decided to make a bramble streusel cake. And then obviously I started wondering how far back that practice goes.
A Streuselkuchen, for those of you who have not tried this carb-laden delicacy, is a cake – usually an enriched yeast dough – topped with crumbled pieces of a mix of flour, sugar, and butter. Early recipes usually leave it at that, but today, it is customary to add a layer of fruit or jam between the dough and the topping. I opted for freshly picked brambles because they grow on my commute and are just delicious.
The recipes I adopted come from my trusty standby cookbooks, the Bayerisches Kochbuch (18th edition of 1947) and the Kochbuch der Büchergilde of 1958. The recipe in the latter is simple and generous:
Streusel cake (very popular in Saxony and Silesia!)
Yeast Dough #II; For streusel: 200-250g flour, 1 pinch (lit: the amount that fits the tip of a knife) of cinnamon, 150g powdered sugar, 150g butter, 1 handful ground almonds if desired
While the yeast dough is rising, place the flour for streusel in a bowl. Add a pinch of cinnamon, 150g powdered sugar, and a handful of ground almonds if desired. Pour on the boiling butter. Stir well and allow to cool! Then roll out the risen yeast dough to 1/2cm thickness and place the flat cake on a greased baking sheet. After it has been allowed to rise for a short while, prick it with a fork to ensure an even rise and brush it lightly with water. Now rub the streusel between your fingers to crumble it and spread it evenly over the cake. Baking time: 25-30 minutes at a good medium heat.
(Grete Wilinsky: Das Kochbuch der Büchergilde, Büchergilde Gutenberg, Frankfurt (Main) 1958, p. 474)
That ‘yeast dough #II’ is a heavy, rich dough, but I was working under time constraints and went for a simple baking powder-leavened base. The Bayerisches Kochbuch did not disappoint:
776. Baking powder dough, medium firmness
40-60g butter, 1-2 eggs, 40-60g sugar, 1 pinch salt, 4-6 tbsp milk, 250g flour, lemon zest or vanilla sugar, ½ sachet baking powder, fat to coat the tin and brush the cake
Whip butter to a foam, add sugar and eggs alternately, stir flour and milk to the foamy matter, finally add the sieved baking powder mixed with a handful of flour. Spread out the dough thinly on a greased sheet with a floured hand. Brush with fat it it is given a wet filling. Fill as desired, bake at a medium heat.
The stated amount is sufficient for a small square baking sheet or two small springform tins.
(Bayerisches Kochbuch neu bearbeitet von Frau Dr. med. E. Lydtin, 18th edition, Weiss’sche Buchdruckerei, Munich 1947 (Allied Information Control License US-E-117) p. 205)
This is both better suited to fruit toppings and faster to make after a workday. I also appreciate the spare prose and economical use of ingredients of the immediate postwar period. The result was very palatable and appreciated by colleagues and students.
Having managed to produce something delicious, I began digging into its antecedents. Streuselkuchen is so stereotypically German it is hard to imagine there was a time without it, but of course there must have been. It depends on sugar and ‘sweet’ (fresh, unsalted) butter, both relatively recent imports. Tracing the name is only somewhat helpful; streusel derives from the very streuen and can also mean dried leaves for feeding livestock or straw laid on the floor. The first mention of Streusselen we have that is clearly a food item dates to the late sixteenth century, but we do not know what it is. The juxtaposition with Christwecken suggests some kind of pastry, but that is not sure.
The word Streusel in the current sense comes into its own with the advent of modernity, of white roller-milled flour, refined sugar, and home baking. Statistics on its use in print show it takes off around 1900. The Streuselkuchen as we know it seems to be a luxury of the lower middle classes, an indulgence for family celebrations and village parties served on large baking sheets. The earliest recipes I was able to find do not use the word streusel, but the dish is clearly the same and it is associated with the southeast of Germany, with Saxony and Silesia. The encyclopaedic Der Dresdner Koch of 1844, usually invested in identifying the cosmopolitan nature of its foods, identifies it as à l’Allemande.
Crumb (Krümchen– oder Brösel-) cake, common. Tarte de grumeaux de farine à l’Allemande
Twelve Loth of butter are melted, about three quarters of a pound of flour along with two spoonfuls of ground cinnamon, six Loth of sugar, and a little salt mixed are together and rubbed to crumbs so that the largest ones are about the size of a pea. These are sprinkled on a cake as described above (the previous recipe specifies “a yeast dough as though for rusks”) after it was well brushed with melted butter, to a depth of half a finger or one small finger. They are drizzled with melted butter, baked to a nice colour, sprinkled with sugar, and served warm or cold.
(Johann Friedrich Baumann: Der Dresdner Koch, Dresden 1844, vol II p. 102)
There may be earlier recipes hiding in some 18th- or 17th-century recipe collection, but given they could bear just about any name, I cannot make this a serious project now. If I find it, I am sure to revisit the story. Until then. I will keep playing with Streuselkuchen because it is just very good – also with a shortcrust base.