SC - A pretzel recipe from Rumpolt I (was: New Rumpolt chapter ...)

[Elaine Koogler]

I had been told recently that they were invented by a monk who used the shape to
teach folks how to hold their hands in prayer...true or not????

Kiri

Thomas Gloning wrote:

> Thanks, Stefan and Lady Brighid, for your comments. In the meantime, I
> asked Gwen Cat if she could provide some translations, but she seems to
> be on vacation or busy with other things. Thanks also to Harriet for the
> links to online translation machines. However, it seems to me, that
> these machines are NOT built to translate 16th century texts. The
> results, I got, are not even a starting point. It seems to me, that one
> should NOT use these machines unless one knows BOTH languages very well.
>
> Here is a _rough_ translation of Rumpolts pretzel recipe #55 on page
> 169b:
>
> 55. Take white flour, only the white of eggs and some wine, sugar and
> anise, prepare a dough with these ingredients, roll the dough with clean
> hands such that it becomes longish and round. Make small pretzels from
> it and put them into a warm oven and bake them so that you do not burn
> it but that they get pretty dry. This way, they will become crisp and
> good. If you like, you may take cinnamon as an ingredient for the dough,
> too (but you can leave it). This dish is called Precedella.
>
> As a side note to a question about a 15th century pretzel picture in a
> recent mail:
>
> IN the socalled Richenthal chronicle about the Constance concile, there
> is a picture of a kind of pastry in the form of a pretzel. In the
> Constance manuscript of this chronicle (fol. 23a), there is a piece of
> text beneath the picture, where the pretzels in the picture are referred
> to with the expression "brätschellen":
>
> "Och waren brotbecken zu:o Costentz, die hetten ringe und claine
> offenlin. Die fürten sy uff stoskerlin durch die stat und buchend darin
> bastetten und ring und brätschellen und sollichs brottes. Dero warend
> etlich erfüllet mit hünren, etlich mit vogeln, gewu:ortz, mit gu:otter
> spetzery, und etlich mit flaisch und etlich mit vischen gebachen, wie
> die ainer gern wolt haben" (23a; Feger II 173b).
>
> "brätschellen" is also used in the Aulendorf manuscript of this
> chronicle, from the 15th century too; however, the wording is slightly
> different:
>
> "... darinn sy basteten, ring und brätschelen bu:ochend. Die basteten
> waren ettlich mit hüner und flaisch gemacht ...".
>
> The difference is, that the filling is clearly mentioned in respect to
> the pies. Later on, there is another passage in the text, where these
> foreign bakers and their "basteten", "ring" and "brätschelen" are
> mentioned again.
>
> In the printed version of this text from 1536, the word is
> "bretschelen". Alas, I don't have access to the printed edition of 1488
> for the moment.
>
> Now, all these forms seem to belong to "Brezel", whose predecessors can
> be traced back to Old High German; the German word is an early loan from
> Latin or/and Italian sources. (I won't go into the details of the word
> history here.)
>
> Pretzels are mentioned as an ingredient in the 15th century "Bruchstücke
> aus einem alemannischen Büchlein von guter Speise" #16, p. 204.4 (this
> text is online).
>
> "ayr bretzen" (egg pretzels) are mentioned in a comparison in the
> cookbook of Philippina Welser ("wie die ayr bretzen"; 51r=101.20), and
> they are mentioned by Hans Sachs, too.
>
> Apart from the two pretzel recipes in Rumpolt (1581), there are several
> other recipes in later cookbooks.
>
> Moriz Heyne (p. 277) says, that Pretzels originally were baked as a
> devotional pastry...
>
> More later,
> T.
>
> ============================================================================
>
> To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
> Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".
>
> ============================================================================