SC - Pretzels, 1417

[Christina M. Krupp]

Hello --

Somebody asked about pretzels a while ago. I mentioned the Breughel
painting, the Fight between Carnival and Lent, as being a mid-sixteenth
century source to document the existence of pretzels... 

(...or, I should say, to document the existence of pretzel-shaped food,
because of course the fact that it looks like a pretzel to us, doesn't
necessarily mean that it tastes like a modern pretzel; I don't have any
information on what Breughel's pretzels are actually made from, but as a
Lenten food, it would not surprise me to find it was simple flour, water,
yeast, and perhaps a touch of salt....) 

Anyway, I just found an earlier illustration.  I noticed it in P. W. 
Hammond's Food and Feast in Medieval England (1996 ,Sutton Publishing).

On p. 52 is an 1874 redrawing of a scene of street vendors, originally
portrayed in the Concilium Constantiense. It's from Constance, Germany,
and is dated to 1417. Above the merchant's head we see ten pretzel-shaped
items that have been hung on a horizontal rod. If you can believe the
proportions in the illustration, they seem to be the size of an adult's
head.

- -- Marieke

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