SC - Sabina Welser's Cookbook

[Valoise Armstrong]

>At Pennsic, I picked up a cookbook titled Sabina Welser's Cookbook
>translated from Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin (c. 1553) by Valoise
>Armstrong.   Does anyone know anything about the german source for this
>cookbook?  Are the recipes truly all from the mid-1500s?
>Unfortunately, this is only the English translation and does not include
>the original german.

According to Hugo Stopp who edited the hand-written manuscript for
publication the majority of the book appears to be written in one
handwriting style, that of Sabina Welserin. Unfortunately there were
several women in the Welser family with that name in the 16th C. but the
likeliest suspects died in either 1576 or 1599. Stopp also says that
additions were made by a second person, but he describes the second
handwriting as being a distinctly 16th C. style. So, yes, the recipes date
from the 16th C.

>The reason I ask is this cookbook is unsual in several regards. A number
>of the recipes give amounts. There are several pastry recipes (standing
>pies, dumplings and tarts). Since these are unusual offerings in the
>English, French and Italian books I have studied I wondered if this
>cookbook was entirely from the mid-1500's or maybe contained later
>recipes as well.

The recipes are sometimes more detailed than earlier cookbooks, but this
might have more to do with the time period than the location. Most of the
English and Frennch medieval cookbooks that are readily available are
definitely earlier than this. But look at Knelme Digby and Hugh Plat's
Delightes for Ladies - their instructions are much more detailed than
earlier English recipes.

If anyone's interested Hugo Stopp's transcription along with a translation
into modern German shouldn't be too hard to get through interlibrary loan.

Das Kochbuch der Sabina Welserin. Heidelberg: Carl Winter
Univeritaetsverlag, 1980.
        ISBN 3-533-02905-0

Valoise


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