SC - Brussels sprouts, Rosenkohl // What is "Tyffan"? // Bohemian cookbook 1591?

Fri Apr 7 15:06:46 PDT 2000

<< ... I make brussel sprouts with sauteed onions and bacon diced, salt
and pepper, honey and vinegar. ... It is similar to the
treatment for hot German potato salad I learned from a Czeck butcher. 
Basically a sweet and sour taste.  I have not really studied the German
texts, maybe Thomas could tell us if that treatment is period? >>

As far as I can see brussels sprouts were not known in 16th century
Germany and before. Therefore, the treatment of brussels sprouts in the
way you described it, would not be period, too.

"As far as I can see", here means: I did some _quick_ diving around in:
- -- German dictionaries (Grimm'sches Wörterbuch, Paul/Henne/Objartel,
Alphabetisches Verzeichnis deutscher Pflanzennamen, Weigand/Hirt,
Trübner, Kluge/Götze, the old culinary dictionaries of Marperger 1716
and Amaranthes 1715),
- -- herbals (Tabernaemontanus 1731, which often includes references to
the earlier herbals),
- -- cookbooks (my electronic collection of German texts 1350 onwards),
- -- dietary texts (Elsholtz' Diaeteticon),
- -- books on culinary and food history (Moriz Heyne, Wiswe)
but could not find anything indicating that brussels sprouts (and the
aforesaid treatment of brussels sprouts) were known before 1600.

There is one book which made me wonder. The German translation of "The
book of ingredients" says on one page, that brussels sprouts were
cultivated only something more than a hundred years ago (18th century),
but on another page that (someone said) they were cultivated first in
the Netherlands in the Middle Ages ("ROSENKOHL. Er soll erstmals in den
im Mittelalter blühenden Gärtnereien der Niederlande gezüchtet worden
sein"; p.240; "soll" ~ 'someone said/wrote that'). Up to now, I did not
see medieval recipes for brussels sprouts in this thread, rather several
people marked their posts with "OOP". Is there any evidence for brussels
sprouts in the Middle ages somewhere?

As always: I will keep my eyes open & : mistrust everything I said, I
might have looked for the _wrong_ German word (there were other
dialectal forms or words for brussels sprouts, e.g. _kohlsprossen_, on
the other hand, the expression _Rosenkohl_ was earlier used for a kind
of broccoli, too) ... 
***
Now, to come not wholly with empty hands to those of you interested in
pre-1600 food and beverages: here is a recipe from "The good huswifes
handmaide for the kitchen", c.1594. I must confess, that I did not find
out up to now what a "Tyffan" is. In any case, one must "drinke of it in
the morning warme". Wasn't there a thread (some hundred digests
earlier), whether or not there are warm drinks of some sort?

"To make a Tyffan

Take a pint of Barley beeing picked, sprinkled with faire
water, so put it in a faire stone morter, and with your
pestell rub the barley, and that will make it tuske, then
picke out the barley from the huskes, and set your barley
on the fyre in a gallon of faire water, so let it seeth
til it come to a pottle. Then put into your water,
Succory, Endive, Cinkefoyle, Violet leaves, of each one
handfull, one ounce of Anniseed, one ounce of Liquoris
bruised, and thirtie great raisons, so let all this geare
seeth til it come to a quart: then take it off, let it
stand and settle, and so take of the clearest of it, and
let it be strained, and when you have strained the
clearest of it, the let it stand a good pretie while.
Then put in foure whites of Egs al to beaten, shels and
all, then stir it ell together, so set it on the fyre
againe, let it seeth, and ever as the scum doth rise take
it off, and so let it seeth a while: then let it run
through a strainer or an Ipocras bagge, and drinke of it
in the morning warme."
(Source: The good huswifes handmaide, c.1594, ed. Peachey, p.51).

***
Firpo, in his 'Gastronomia del Rinascimento', 1974, p. 182 mentions:
- -- Kucharska neb' Kucharstwi. Praze 1591.
This could be a pre-1600 Bohemian cookbook. Did anybody see it?