Today, it’s back to work and with less time than I would like to, it will have to be a short recipe from the Solothurn MS. Very straightforward and manly, it looks like the breakfast of champions:
B12 A good dish
If you want to make a good dish, take beef and boil it a little (ein wenig), and then chop it small. Then take bacon and also chop that. Lay the bacon and the meat into a cauldron and stir it well, set it over the coals and let it cook. Also add 3 eggs and good spices, mix that together and pour it in with the meat. Also add a little saffron. And let it cook well et caetera.
It is quite unusual for a recipe this basic to be recorded, but I suspect this kind of dish played a bigger role in demonstrating social distinction than almond milk or gamebirds in day-to-day interaction. It took cash and resources to produce, and it represented desirable qualities in a handy package, but it was also quick and could be realised with what you could find in the house or on any town market.
Despite it being basic, there is a fair bit more scope for interpretation than appears at first. Firstly, we do not know how much meat and bacon is called for. I assume it is not a great quantity, but that is speculation. After parboiling and chopping the beef and mixing it with bacon, it is cooked over the fire in a kessel, a metal vessel designed to be suspended rather than a standing pottery cookpot. The verb used is kochen, a very general description that suggest no additional water is involved. Depending on the length of cooking time, the amount of meat juices, and any broth that came along from the parboiling, the eggs could now become a binding agent for what is mostly a meat mixture, provide the liaison for a sauce, or make an omelet or scramble with a substantial meat component. I come down on the side of an egg dish with meat rather than a meat dish with egg, making this akin to the scrambled or solidified egg dishes found elsewhere. Imagine it served with bread and beer, it will make a rich, filling meal that reminded you of the creature comforts wealth could provide.
The recipe collection I am currently translating is part of a manuscript now held at the Zentralbibliothek Solothurn as S 392. The entire manuscript looks fascinating, a collection of craft recipes for things like dyes, stains, paints, vanishes, and parlour tricks, but I will limit myself to the culinary recipes in it. The majority of them are in German and were edited and published in Brigitte Weber: Die Kochrezepte der Handschrift S 293, Transkription und Untersuchung einer spätmittelalterlichen Kochrezeptsammlung aus der Zentralbibliothek Solothurn, Gießen 2026.
The manuscript dates to the period around 1490-1510, based on watermarks and handwriting. There is no internal date. The recipes are an eclectic collection, which is not unusual for the medieval manuscript tradition. They were most likely written down in Baden. Some refer to Italian customs which were fashionable at the time while others are solidly in the German tradition.
The collection is sometimes called the oldest Swiss cookbook, a title that is contested because of its origins north of the modern border. The designation makes little sense at the time anyway, given how closely connected the cities of the Confederation were with their neighbours at the time. The recipes clearly were valued in Solothurn, most likely because they were useful.